Pietro Annigoni's portraits of Elizabeth II

Wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter, Elizabeth stands in a pastoral landscape, inspired by a comment that she made to Annigoni of how much she liked to watch people and traffic from a window as a child.

The Times placed the portrait in the tradition of works that sacrificed "the reality of the monarch to the idea of the monarchy", saying that Annigoni had "managed to capture some of her Majesty's dignity and beauty.

[2] The paper compared the work unfavourably to Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of Jane Seymour, in which they felt "the complexity of the detail creates a coherent and deliberate abstract pattern, which has a life and meaning of its own", transforming the sitter into a "more than human symbol", whereas with Annigoni "...there is no such purpose and eloquence in the actual marks on the canvas; something has been subtracted from reality, but nothing has been added".

[3] In a 2013 article for The Daily Telegraph on the difficulties of painting Elizabeth, Harry Wallop wrote that the 1955 portrait has subsequently been "deemed to be the most successful of all" as it "...makes no attempt to unearth the inner life of the young woman.

It has been described as "stark and monumental" with Elizabeth "standing against an ambiguous, spare and gloomy, plain background", as opposed to the earlier "glamorous and romantic" portrait.

[8] The Times later described it as having "encountered more widespread hostility from public and critics" than the earlier painting, including a woman who threw a Bible at it when it was on display at the National Portrait Gallery where it was seen by 250,000 people.

[3] In 1972, Annigoni completed a circular drawing of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh facing each other against a background of Windsor Castle to mark their silver wedding anniversary.