The Market's Most Wanted 2024

Reigning
Queens

On top of his predilection for female famous faces, Andy Warhol was fascinated by monarchy; he even claimed he wanted to be “as famous as the Queen of England”. In his 1985 Reigning Queens series, Warhol pays homage to the queens of four nations, each in four poppy colourways.

Andy Warhol Reigning Queens for sale

Sell Your Art
with Us

Join Our Network of Collectors. Buy, Sell and Track Demand

Submission takes less than 2 minutes & there's zero obligation to sell
The Only Dedicated Print Market IndexTracking 48,500 Auction HistoriesSpecialist Valuations at the Click of a Button Build Your PortfolioMonitor Demand & Supply in Network Sell For Free to our 25,000 Members

Meaning & Analysis

In his Reigning Queens series from 1985, Warhol demonstrates his enduring fascination with royalty as well as iconic female faces. From the instantly recognisable Queen Elizabeth II to the lesser known Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands the works are a celebration of regal allure. Each would have been reigning at the time Warhol made the prints, in 1985, and a few still are. Produced in sets of four vibrant screen prints for each queen and number 16 in total, the works take traditional state portraits of the monarchs and subvert them into instantly recognisable examples of Pop Art.

Beginning with his first reproduction of Marilyn Monroe’s famous visage in 1963, Warhol had been making screen print portraits of famous women – and men – for over two decades, using the medium of screen printing to produce and reproduce his images in large editions. Here we see him put this method of reproduction to use in representing regal figures who previously would have seen their faces repeated over and over on stamps, currency and in the media. With this portfolio Warhol seems to be commenting on the way that fame can make a face into a commodity to be reproduced at will in order to become a potent symbol of power as well as a product.

Warhol’s act of appropriation in the Reigning Queens series is not straightforward. In prints such as Queen Margrethe he added blocks of colour that appear to have been collaged onto the image while details such as jewellery and facial features are emphasised with a line of coloured pencil or crayon. In one particular example, Queen Margrethe’s striking profile is further highlighted by the contrasting pink background that clashes pleasingly with her green dress. Similarly in the first print from the series, Queen Elizabeth is given a Warholian makeover with added red lips and an electric blue rinse surrounding a blank mask-like face.

In combining bright commercial colours with royal icons the works seem to be both a homage and a satire of kitsch aesthetics. The monarchs, frozen in time and colour, are now on equal footing with the models, actresses and Renaissance muses that form Warhol’s oeuvre. Showing his mastery of screen printing as a medium, Warhol transforms these women into Pop Art icons through his daring use of colour blocking and elegant draughtsmanship learned as a fashion illustrator at the beginning of his career.

Warhol famously once claimed that he wanted to be “as famous as the Queen of England” and with this series it is easy to see how he might have achieved that ambition. Today his name is synonymous with the screen print as a ‘high art’ medium where once it was only known in commercial printing. He is widely celebrated as the ‘king of Pop Art’ achieving if not quite royalty status at least enough acclaim to have influenced and inspired thousands.

10 Facts About Warhol's Reigning Queens

Queen Ntombi Twala Of Swaziland (F. & S. II.349) by Andy Warhol

Queen Ntombi Twala Of Swaziland (F. & S. II.349) © Andy Warhol 1985

1. The series depicts four queens who ruled in 1985.

Queen Elizabeth II Royal Edition (F. & S. II.336A) by Andy Warhol

Queen Elizabeth II Royal Edition (F. & S. II.336A) © Andy Warhol 1985

2. The Reigning Queens series is based on photographs.

The 16 prints are based on official media photographs. Each of them features abstract chunks of colour that appear collaged but were screen-printed by the artist. To emphasise details such as the queens' jewels, Warhol incorporated printed elements from drawings to the works. Prints depicting Queen Elizabeth II were based on the official photograph taken by Peter Grugeon at Windsor Castle on 2 April 1975, and released for the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

Queen Beatrix Of The Netherlands (F. & S. II.340) by Andy Warhol

Queen Beatrix Of The Netherlands (F. & S. II.340) © Andy Warhol 1985

3. The series captures the importance of photography in Warhol's creative practice.

The portraits of the Queens capture how photography became a point of departure in Warhol's experimental practice. Based on photographs, the prints confront the viewer with bold variations of one and the same image. As such, the use of photographs allowed Warhol to get to the core of the politics of mass production and artifice underlying public images.

Queen Elizabeth II (F. & S. II.334 - 337) (complete set) by Andy Warhol

Queen Elizabeth II (F. & S. II.334 - 337) (complete set) © Andy Warhol 1985