Also stuck to Yao’s painting was a speech bubble that said, “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!” Animal Rising wrote in its social media post: “Find out why King Charles, patron of the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] should ask them to drop the Assured Scheme”, alongside a link to its website.

The RSPCA Assured Scheme is a program intended to raise welfare standards for farm animals throughout the United Kingdom. According to the RSPCA, farms, abattoirs, hatcheries, and haulers must be assessed and confirmed to have met its standards to remain in operation. A RSPCA Assured sticker is used on products to indicate their high quality.

However the Assured Scheme has faced scrutiny from animal rights activists over the exact criteria used to determine whether a farm passes inspection. Shortly before the vandalism, Animal Rising published an investigation into 45 RSPCA Assured farms, whose operations they described as “indefensible” 

In response to the vandalism, the RSPCA said in a statement: “We cannot condone illegal activity of any kind. Our staff and volunteers work extremely hard rescuing, caring for, and speaking up for animals. Animal Rising’s sustained activity is distracting from our focus on the work that really matters—helping thousands of animals every day.” 

According to the RSPCA, its Assured Scheme is “the best way to help farmed animals right now, while campaigning to change their lives in the future”. The statement added that “concerns about welfare on RSPCA Assured certified farms are taken extremely seriously and RSPCA Assured is acting swiftly to look into these allegations. After receiving the footage on Sunday morning, RSPCA Assured has launched an immediate, urgent investigation.”

Philip Mould told The Telegraph that he was “delighted to say there was absolutely no damage” to the portrait after the stickers were peeled off.

The first official portrait of King Charles III since his coronation last year, Yeo’s painting was unveiled at Buckingham Palace last month.

The seven-and-a half-foot-tall painting shows Charles facing the viewer head-on, wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards with a sword in hand. He’s pictured against a backdrop of mottled reds and pinks, so that the King’s body appears to disappear into the background. His facial expression appears pensive. Above his shoulder rests a butterfly.

Yeo has long been a prominent portrait painter of royals and celebrities, including Queen Camila, Prince Philip, former prime minister Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, and Damien Hirst, among others.

Criticism rolled in quickly. The New York Times’s chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, wrote that the painting’s primary color “almost instantaneously gave new meaning to the idea of ‘seeing red,'” adding that the usage of the shade is “particularly fraught.” Meanwhile, in a piece for the Cut, writer Danielle Cohen suggested that “Charles’s face is like a disembodied specter of death floating between violent brushstrokes.”

The takes from social media users were predictably more brutal. Among the associations brought up: “Archdemon of Hell,” “Satan,” “bathing in blood,” “surrounded by the spilled blood of the British Empire,” “a portal into the nether realm,” a literalized firestorm of controversy. Those were just the most family-friendly takes; it gets worse from there, as it usually does on X these days.

At least one critic liked the work. Richard Morris wrote on X, “I really like the portrait of King Charles by Jonathan Yeo – the go-to artist for slightly edgy but convincingly recognisable contemporary portraits; before photography, to have a great painter capture your real appearance you accepted the revelation of your flaws and your mortality. It’s what Yeo captures here.”

As for the King’s opinion of the portrait, Yeo told the BBC that he “was initially mildly surprised by the strong colour but otherwise he seemed to be smiling approvingly.”

At the unveiling ceremony, Yeo said in a statement, “It was a privilege and pleasure to have been commissioned by The Drapers’ Company to paint this portrait of His Majesty The King, the first to be unveiled since his Coronation.

“When I started this project,” he continued, “His Majesty The King was still His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and much like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s role in our public life has transformed.

“I do my best to capture the life experiences and humanity etched into any individual sitter’s face, and I hope that is what I have achieved in this portrait. To try and capture that for His Majesty The King, who occupies such a unique role, was both a tremendous professional challenge, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed and am immensely grateful for.”

Yeo completed the painting over the course of four sittings, the first of which was in June 2021. In an interview with the Times, Yeo said that Charles’s demeanor “definitely changed after he became king.”

The portrait was commissioned by the Drapers Company, once a trade association for wool and cloth merchants that is now a philanthropic organization. The work will hang in Drapers’ Hall in London’s financial district, where the company has a gallery of other monarchs, from the end of August. Until that time, it will be on public display at Philip Mould Gallery in London.

Announced last April, the initiative received backlash on social media as a “shameful waste of money” by the anti-monarch group Republic, pointing to the dire need in England for better-funded social services.

The initiative includes institutions such as local authorities, courts, schools, and rescue services. Those eligible can apply to receive the new portrait.

“The UK government considers it right that public authorities, as part of the fabric of our nation, have the opportunity to commemorate this moment, strengthen civil pride and reflect the new era in our history,” said deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden in a statement. Since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, monarch portraits have been produced to give the firm a “human face”, a spokesperson for the cabinet office told the Art Newspaper.

The portrait in question was taken by photographer Hugo Burnand at Windsor Castle last year. In it, the monarch is clad in an admiral of the fleet uniform with medals and decorations.

This kind of state-wide program is hardly new—the tradition dates to antiquity with emperor’s faces, initials, and crests plastered on coinage and other memorabilia around their respective empire. For his part, King Charles is well-known for his interest in painting and support of the arts.

The protest was staged by two members of the climate action group This is Rigged. The activists spray-painted This is Rigged’s logo in neon pink across the king’s body, along with the phrase “the people are mightier than a lord.”

The quote was borrowed from the historic Highland Land League, who staged rent strikes and land occupations to secure rights for peasants being forced from their ancestral lands in the late 19th century.

“Why does the Scottish government think it’s acceptable to keep allowing new oil and gas projects to go ahead, to not even opposing them?” one of the two protesters stated as they glued their hands to the floor and sat in front of the portrait. “If we want a future—if the Scottish government want young people to have a future—they need to oppose all new oil and gas licenses.”

Following the protest, a gallery for modern portraits was closed for the remainder of the day. The rest of the institution, however, stayed open.

“At the moment we are assessing the impact but there appears to be no sign of damage to any actual artwork,” a spokesperson for the museum told the Herald Scotland.

The two protesters were arrested about an hour later.

The group has demanded that the Scottish government “oppose all new fossil fuel projects” and “create a clear and fully funded transition for our oil and gas workers,” as outlined on its website.

This Is Rigged has threatened to “shut down the oil and gas industry” until its demands are met.

Though King Charles III has long advocated for environmental causes and has spoken out about climate change, Scotland remains the biggest oil producer and the second-largest gas producer in Europe.

Also known as Cullinan I, the Star of Africa is a 530-carat white diamond cut from the Cullinan diamond, a 3,100-carat stone that was mined near Pretoria. A smaller, sister stone was also cut from the massive Cullinan diamond and is set in the Imperial State Crown. Both the scepter and the crown are traditionally used by British monarchs during ceremonial occasions.

A Change.org petition calling for the stone to be returned to South Africa has already garnered over 8,200 signatures by Friday afternoon.

“The diamond needs to come to South Africa. It needs to be a sign of our pride, our heritage, and our culture,” Mothusi Kamanga, a lawyer and activist in Johannesburg, told Reuters. “I think generally the African people are starting to realize that to decolonize is not just to let people have certain freedoms, but it’s also to take back what has been expropriated from us.”

Not everyone agrees, however, that the stone should be returned.

“I don’t think it matters anymore. Things have changed, we’re evolving,” Johannesburg resident Dieketseng Nzhadzhaba told Reuters. “What mattered for them in the olden days about being superior… it doesn’t matter to us anymore.”

The scepter is one of more than 100 objects collectively known as “The Crown Jewels,” which date back to the 17th century, and, per a Town and Country report, “are traditionally a major part of the coronation ceremony when a new monarch officially takes the throne, because each has a special meaning connected to the monarch’s reign.”

The Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross, in which the Star of Africa is set, is “meant to represent the crown’s power and governance” and has been an integral part of coronations since it was created in 1661 for King Charles II’s coronation. It has been used in every coronation ceremony since and was last publicly seen last September when it was placed on the Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin during her state funeral.

The discourse around once great colonial powers repatriating works that they were given—or took with force—has been become increasingly heated. These calls for repatriation, however, have typically focused on artifacts like the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes.

Spearheaded by the artist Sam Barnett, The Royally Big Portrait, as the project is known, was created using thousands of crowd-sourced line-drawn profiles of the king. Though online submissions wrapped on April 28, those wishing to contribute can still upload images, which will be part of the larger digital image, via Outernet through May 8.

Individual contributions can be viewed within the portrait at Outernet using an iPad. The company is planning to announce the final number of submissions on May 9.

A canvas iteration and prints of the portrait are slated to be auctioned and sold, respectively, by Christie’s during an event at Outernet on May 4 to support the Children in Need charity for kids living in poverty or experiencing social injustices.

Additionally, Christie’s is holding its annual exhibition of works by students from the Drawing Year, which is an intensive program for 10- to 18-year-olds that the king established as part of the Royal Drawing School in 2000. The school offers in-person and online classes to young artists focused primarily on observational drawing.

For the coronation, Christie’s organized an additional show of works this year by the Drawing Year alumni, which will be on view from May 2 to 25. The show features commissioned works by the Royal Drawing School, along with an archive of drawings—one made by each student after successfully graduating.

Of the commissioned works, five will be available for purchase as limited edition prints. A portion of the funds will go towards the Drawing Year Scholarship Fund.

Kevis House Gallery is also selling signed limited edition lithographs of King Charles III’s watercolors, accompanied by an exhibition showcasing more than a dozen of his paintings, on view from May 2 to 21. Sales will benefit his The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.

The 1.1-ton, 7-foot-tall French limestone statue shows the queen in her robes of the Order of the Garter and is installed above the West Front entrance of the 850-year-old building.

It was made by stonemason Richard Bossons, who worked at York Minster for 11 years and won a competition to create the statue. Previously a specialist in cathedral gargoyles, Bossons has never before completed a portrait. The 3-ton lump was cut by a machine before he added the finishing touches with a chisel.

“I hope everybody likes it. It is the best I could pull out of myself. Hopefully I have done justice to the Queen and the King likes it and I have done justice to the front of the building,” Bossons said of his work.

The statue was commissioned five years ago with the intention of commemorating the queen’s platinum jubilee. It was finished in August, just one month before her death.

On his decision to portray the queen later in life, Bossoms remarked, “I wanted to get a sense of her longevity on the throne over 70 years.”

At the unveiling, King Charles reflected, “The late Queen was always vigilant for the welfare of her people during her life,” calling the statue “a tribute to a life of extraordinary service and devotion.” 

The statue will eventually overlook the Queen Elizabeth Square.

The gallery and museum, which closed in October 2016, reopened to the public earlier this year in March, following a £68.2 million ($75.3 million) project to increase gallery space by 35 percent.

The Burrell Collection was originally opened by the king’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1983. The collection, which houses 9,000 objects, was donated to the city of Glasgow by shipping merchant Sir William Burrell and his wife Constance in 1944.

For his visit, King Charles was clad in Royal Stewart Hunting Tartan as he was presented an autumnal wreath by local school children. Jane Rowlands, senior museums manager at Glasgow Life, took him on a guided tour of the exhibitions.

The king stopped to admire a statue of the Luohan, portraying a Buddhist monk, with which both his mother and grandmother were previously photographed. He also viewed the collection of stained-glass windows and tapestries before meeting with volunteers and workers who contributed to the museum’s refurbishment.

Before leaving, the king unveiled a plaque commemorating the occasion.

King Charles III’s passion for art began in his youth and has been continually cultivated through the painting of his own watercolors over the last 50 years.