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‘I’ve gotten to know her a bit. Personally, she’s an amazing role model,’ Pragnell explains, adding that, despite the sense of duty and purpose that has become synonymous with the Princess Royal, her most notable quality is being ‘more human, more down-to-earth’ than one might expect from a royal.
‘I think it all comes down to her humility. She’s an intelligent woman, and she works incredibly hard and is very professional and a team player,’ Pragnell says. ‘The Military is about individuals, but it’s also about this greater thing that is comprised of those individuals… It’s about that sense of service.’
The portrait, which will be on display at Painters-Stainers’ Company Livery Hall for London Craft Week before finding its home at the Ministry of Defence military base, was commissioned by the Intelligence Corps in 2024 to commemorate Princess Anne’s official appointment as Colonel-in-Chief. Its presentation of the Princess Royal as a woman in a military leadership role chimes with the Defence Committee’s announcement that women make up just 11.7% of the Army – a number that it says is still too low.’ There is, the committee added, a need to attract the ‘best and brightest’ to prepare for ‘what might be coming.’
Portraiture has always been a symbolic art, and the newly commissioned portrait of Princess Anne aims to capture the interplay between personality and tradition. Pragnell, who has long been interested in the symbolism of formal dress, has painted Her Royal Highness wearing her Intelligence Corps Mess Dress, which is a study in the use of colour to reflect history and heritage: Cypress green to reflect the uniforms worn by Intelligence staff during the First World War; grey, for the colour of their armbands in the Second World War; and scarlett, symbolic of the secret work that the Corps performs each day.
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