Ministers argue over Damien Hirst's portrait of Elizabeth II

The portrait was broadcast to millions of households during the pandemic, when it served as the backdrop for numerous Matt Hancock broadcasts

They are blocked daily discussing hot-button political issues, often vying with each other for top positions. But today another hot battleground opens up for ministers: the government's art collection.

One of the most valuable assets of the state collection, as it turns out, is Damien's striking portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Hirst.

Described, perhaps aptly, as a “spinning” painting, the portrait was broadcast to millions of households during the Covid pandemic, when it served as the backdrop to numerous broadcasts by Matt Hancock, the then health secretary.

We can now discover that Hancock was far from the only senior Tory who liked the painting called Portrait Beautiful.

Over the past five years, she has changed one ministerial position five times. years — and not just because of changes in government leadership.

It has been the subject of several controversies since 2015, when Mr. Hirst's charity first donated it to the government's art collection.< /p >The painting is based on an official photograph of the late Queen. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates/Damien Hirst and Science Ltd

An art critic once said that Hirst's first known portrait of the then monarch completed the career turn from the «bad boy» of British art to an enduring fixture of the establishment.

Following the 2015 election, Ed Vaizey, the then arts minister who had served in the department since 2010, managed to bag the portrait for his office in June 2015, beating his then boss Sir John Whittingdale, who had mistakenly assumed he would be culture secretary have dominant rights.

A Whitehall source familiar with the discussions at the time said of the younger minister, now Lord Vaizey of Didcot: “He fought hard to keep it.”

In an article for Country & In Town House magazine, Lord Vaizey later said: “Each new minister is visited by the formidable director of collections, Penny Johnson, who asks what they want to see on their walls. As the new Minister of Arts, I was extremely excited and interested. I asked Penny for a range of works — Kosoff, Freud, Auerbach and so on. After listening to this insane tirade, Penny straightened up to her full height and said coldly: “Minister, we are not the Argos catalogue.”

“What I got was Damien Hirst, and not just any old Damien Hirst. This is a portrait of our wonderful Queen.»

The portrait now hangs on the wall in Michelle Donelan's store' Company office in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. Photo: Belinda Jiao

The painting, described on the government art collection website as combining «tradition and modernity in one powerful image», is based on an official photograph of the late Queen. It is a «modern take» on his early paintings, in which large canvases were placed on a rotating turntable and then thrown, dropped and paint poured onto them.

When Theresa May sacked Lord Vaizey in July 2016, The lucky beneficiary of his departure is Matt Hancock, the new Secretary of State for Digital and Culture, who inherits his predecessor's job and with it a prized portrait of Hirst.

When Hancock was appointed health secretary in July 2018, he ensured that Beautiful Portrait also made the 700-metre move from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to its office at the top of the Department of Health.

There, the topic became a regular feature on television as Mr Hancock updated the nation on the government's response to the pandemic.

However, when he quit in June 2021 after it was revealed he had broken Covid rules, it was Oliver Dowden, the then culture secretary, who immediately intervened.

Ten days after Hancock's departure, Hancock's portrait of the Queen returned boxed up — this time for return to the DCMS Secretary of State's office. Mr Dowden succeeded where Sir John failed.

The following month he proudly tweeted a photo of himself on a formal call — with his loot hanging on the wall in the background.

Having received the portrait, Mr. n Dowden took him with him to cabinet when he was appointed party chairman in September 2021, putting Nadine Dorries, his successor, out of a job in what she might describe as a so-called “movement”. people who she said were at odds with her and Mr Johnson and were continuing to organize the prime minister's overthrow.

When Liz Truss walked into Downing Street in September 2022 with Mr Dowden, a close ally of Rishi Sunak, safely on the bench, the portrait was again commissioned back to DCMS, this time by Michelle Donelan. Ms Donelan followed her predecessor's lead and then took the well-traveled painting to the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology when she was appointed to lead the ministry in February 2023, where it resides today in her office.

Now back in government as deputy prime minister, Mr Dowden takes solace in the fact that the portrait's modern flamboyance will be no match for his current post at the heart of the Cabinet, which dates back to the 18th century. century

Instead, on the wall hangs a large copy of David Bailey's Sapphire Jubilee photograph of the late queen, with a portrait of the king commissioned as part of a government scheme to supply official photographs of the new monarch. public buildings.