[4] The painter and the and sitter first met in 1983 when Freud phoned Parker Bowles, then the Commanding officer of the Household Cavalry Regiment, to request some horses to be life models for paintings he planned to create.
Subsequently, Parker Bowles returned to the Knightsbridge barracks to reclaim his old military uniform from when he served as Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, then as Colonel Commanding the Household Cavalry and Silver Stick in Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II, and then as Brigadier director of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps; and redonned it.
The long, loose rectangular strip floating upward behind the brigadier's upraised hand not only controls the visual space but could almost be a dream of a baton or a riding crop.
[11] Tom Parker Bowles told the Evening Standard "Freud captures something about my father that is not possible to describe, something closer to his essence, his soul.
It goes beyond the merely representational and ends up being a complete portrait in every way" and the Irish Times that "Even if the sitter were not my father, I'd still be struck by the beauty, quiet majesty and sheer technical brilliance of this picture".