PRETTY WEAK: Kate Middleton (top left) manages a smile yesterday for Paul Emsley, whose work (right) was widely bashed. (
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What did they do to Kate Middleton?
The newly unveiled official portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge turned the 31-year-old beauty into a dowdy, ghostly woman at least 10 years older, artists and critics said.
“It’s difficult to pinpoint what is most offensive,” sniffed Stuart Pearson Wright of the work by fellow portraitist Paul Emsley. “Is it the pursed lips and lumpy cheeks that put one in mind of Marlon Brando in ‘The Godfather’?”
Critics who saw the painting when it was publicly shown for the first time yesterday at London’s National Portrait Gallery said the bags depicted under Kate’s too-small and too-far-apart eyes, the hint of silver in her hair and her lined face made her look haggard and grimacing.
And not at all like the most vivacious woman in Britain.
“Artist Paul Emsley has managed quite a feat making the future queen look like a dowdy 45-year-old,” wrote Daily Mirror art critic Martin Newman.
“It is like an ‘In Memoriam’ picture etched onto the front of a dark marble gravestone or one of those paintings on black velvet that cohabitate the hallways of everyone’s less discerning grandmother.”
But Kate — who studied art history when she met Prince William in college — saw something she liked. “It’s just amazing. I thought it was brilliant,” she told Emsley.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” added William.
Emsley, an award-winning artist who was chosen by Kate from a short list, defended his work.
“The Duchess explained to me that she would like to be portrayed naturally, her natural self as opposed to her official self,” he said.
But many art lovers were appalled.
“Fortunately, the Duchess of Cambridge looks nothing like this in real life,” said Robin Simon, editor of the British Art Journal. “I’m really sad to say this is a rotten portrait.”
Ben Luke in the London Evening Standard said it was a “gentle, soft-focus image, like a delicately air-brushed photograph or a Vaseline-lensed view of a Hollywood star.”
David Lee, former editor of Art Review magazine, said Emlsey was the wrong man for the job. “He is essentially a wildlife artist used to painting every hair on a gorilla,” he said.
Guardian arts writer Charlotte Higgins detected a “sepulchral gloom” in the painting.
“Kate Middleton is — whatever you think of the monarchy and all its inane surrounding pomp — a pretty young woman with an infectious smile, a cascade of chestnut hair and a healthy bloom,” she wrote.
“How is it that she has been transformed into something unpleasant from the ‘Twilight’ franchise?”