Of all her royal encounters in her role as one of the country's leading portrait painters, Louise Pragnell has only had two fraught moments.
One was while she waited to show off her portrait of the Irish Guards to the Princess of Wales, who was making her first official appearance as the regiment's colonel while on a visit to Mons Barracks in Hampshire in 2023.
"Just as the Prince and Princess are about to arrive, the easel starts to lean forward with the weight of the painting," Louise recalls with mortification in an exclusive interview with HELLO!. "We had people lying on the floor with screwdrivers [to fix it, with minutes to spare]. The [royal couple] arrived and it was very exciting to meet them. They were brilliant and very well briefed. They were really impressive."
The other awkward encounter was with the Princess Royal, who unveiled Louise's painting of the Household Cavalry in 2010.
"She was the first royal I ever met and I got my curtsey all wrong. Having never seen a real life example of a curtsey, I messed it up and went bright red."
Louise, 44, who is usually poised and elegant, won't say exactly how. "I've blocked it out, it was so embarrassing," she says. Princess Anne did not hold it against her. She has since sat for Louise twice, most recently for a portrait with her in the uniform of the Intelligence Corps, to which she was appointed colonel-in-chief in 2022.
Heavy robes
The first portrait featured Anne in the robes of the Worshipful Company of Saddlers, of which she is perpetual master. Louise, anxious to get things right after her mangled curtsey, went to the Saddlers Livery Company in the City of London with her mother Jane so they could rehearse the sitting with Jane as Anne's body double.
It was an apt choice, as Jane had met Anne in the Sixties on her first day working for the fashion designer Sir Norman Hartnell, who had designed Queen Elizabeth II's wedding dress. In a foreshadowing of Louise's mishaps, Jane's attempt to dress Anne faltered because a zip got stuck.
On the day of Louise's first sitting with Anne, she was given strict instructions about where to stand, what to say and when to curtsey. When Anne arrived, she abandoned all protocol.
"She walked in and looked straight across and waved and said, 'Hello!'," Louise says. "The people around were thinking, that didn't go how we'd planned. She's really cool, she just gets on with it.
"She's a seriously impressive person. Her first sitting was her fourth engagement of the day. She had to stand in these heavy robes for two hours. Halfway through, I said: 'Ma'am, do you need a break?' She was like: 'No, do you need a break, Louise?'"
Triple finalist
Louise, whose family founded the jewellers Pragnell in Mayfair, studied fine art at the University of Edinburgh and has been a finalist for the National Portrait Gallery's annual award three times including 2026, when her portrait of the basketball player Pops Mensah-Bonsu will be shown at the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award exhibition. She is also a mother to two children from her previous marriage to the garden designer Marcus Barnett.
© Louise PragnellShe has also painted celebrities including William Hague ("an extraordinary energy and brain") and Jeremy Clarkson, whose first sitting at his Cotswolds farm was a disaster after Louise's back went into spasm while she was setting up her easel.
"I literally couldn't move. He told me to lie down because I think he didn't want a paralysed artist on his farm.
"Lisa Hogan [Jeremy's partner] came in and showed me videos of what to do when you've got back pain. I said: 'Can you both just give me half an hour?'
"The day was a write-off."
Louise returned for further sittings and built such a good rapport with Jeremy that he is one of her most expressive subjects. She depicted him with a quizzical expression and carrying a pitchfork. In one sitting, she asked Jeremy to lift up his chin.
He retorted: "Which one?"
Her most famous sitters are often the easiest to paint because they are at ease with being in the public gaze. She was "extremely nervous" for her first royal portrait, with the Duke of Kent in full military regalia in 2013, but he knew what she needed and posed happily for her. "Royals are very rehearsed at putting people at their ease. They'll want to feel that I'm going to get what I need out of the sitting."
© Louise PragnellLouise's portrait of Pops Mensah-Bonsu will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery from 25 June to 7 October.
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