Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Frank Slater

1903 - 1965

Born in Hampstead, London in 1903. Frank Slater studied at the Royal Academy, became a professional painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy. In addition to oil paintings, he did many drawings of people of distinction for newspapers and magazines. He served in the RAF from 1941 to 1945 and emigrated to U.S.A. in 1953, where he lived and had his studio at Hotel des Artistes in New York City. As a prominent portrait and landscape artist he was commissioned in the early 1950’s by the Canadian Association of New York to paint a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is a portrait based on an official Royal photograph of the Queen. Frank Slater generally avoided portraits based on photographs but, of necessity, he made an exception for this commission. The official unveiling of the painting was performed by the Queen Mother in October 1954 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (which at the time was the home of the Canadian Association of New York) to a great deal of publicity (front page photographs in the New York Times and British National dailies).