In 1985, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol embarked on his largest portfolio of screenprints. Titled Reigning Queens, Warhol chose to focus his creative attention on the four female monarchs who were ruling in the world at the time, having assumed their respective thrones through birth right alone rather than marriage. These four figures included Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. Based on official or media photographs of these monarchs, the screenprint portfolio consists of four colour variants of each queen, amounting to sixteen images in total. The screenprints were created using a photographic silkscreen technique central to Warhol’s practice, employed profusely in both his prints and paintings. Warhol produced two editions of the Reigning Queens portfolio: forty ‘Standard Edition’ prints and thirty ‘Royal Edition’ prints. Screenprints from the ‘Royal Edition’ were adorned with ‘diamond dust’ - fine particles of ground up glass that sparkle in the light like diamonds – adding a glamour and extravagance to these images and further emphasising the regal allure of Warhol’s iconic subjects. The Reigning Queens series brings together many themes central to Warhol’s oeuvre, such as portraiture, celebrity, and consumerism.
Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix reigned as Queen of the Netherlands from 1980, until she abdicated in favour of her eldest son, the current King Willem-Alexander, in 2013. Beatrix comes from a line of reigning queens, succeeding her mother, Queen Juliana (reigned 1948-1980), who in turn succeeded Queen Wilhelmina (reigned 1890-1948), Beatrix’s maternal grandmother. Warhol’s screenprint appropriates an official portrait of Queen Beatrix taken during the celebrations for her inauguration. Beatrix is pictured wearing Queen Emma’s Diamond Tiara, thought to be her favourite due to the frequency with which she selected it for royal engagements. The tiara itself is also a rich symbol of female power within the Dutch monarchy. Originally commissioned for Beatrix’s great-grandmother, it has passed down through the three subsequent generations of reigning queens. In addition to referencing this emblem of ruling women in the Dutch monarchy, Warhol also adds graphic shapes of flat colour to his portrait of Queen Beatrix – an intervention that became more frequent in the artist’s work from the mid-1970s. In this specific colourway, the most prominent rectangle that bisects Queen Beatrix’s portrait is a vivid orange, which poignantly alludes to the colour of the Dutch Royal Family and the monarch’s heritage as a descendant of the House of Orange.
