skip to main content
" "

News

Order by: Title Date

Artists commissioned to record the Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth II

During the historic Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, Parliament invited six UK artists to record the ceremony and wider activities associated with it in and around the Palace of Westminster.

The Lord Speaker’s Advisory Panel on Works of Art (House of Lords) and the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art (House of Commons) selected three artists each. The artists carried out short residencies based at a number of locations within the Parliamentary Estate, using a variety of mediums, from 10-21st September 2022.

Photograph depicting a close-up of a white woman drawing in a sketch book. The sketch book fills the bottom half of the image and contains various sketches. On the left of the image is the woman, although only her hand and black jumper are visible, with her long brown hair falling over her jumper. She is holding a black pen mid sketch and is wearing a white wristband. Above her hand and sketch book is the scene she is sketching in front of her. A raised red carpeted area on the floor spaces is surrounded by police offers and individuals wearing red ceremonial dress. As the individuals are in the background, they are slightly blurry.
Eleanor Crook sketching © House of Commons

The Artists

Following the commission, the six artists returned to Parliament with their proposals. The selected commissions are now underway, with the first completions scheduled for later this year. 

Tina Crawford

Tina Crawford is an artist who predominantly works in free machine embroidery. She trained at Central St Martins and began working with sewing machines after developing fibromyalgia. In 2019, Women Beyond the Box named Tina as one of the top 50 neurodiverse influential women.

Eleanor Crook

Eleanor Crook is a sculptor with a background in classics and archaeology who trained at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy Schools. She is artist-in-residence at King’s College’s Gordon Museum of Pathology and was at the Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam. Her work is represented in a number of international museum collections including the Hunterian and the  Science Museum London.

Dryden Goodwin

Dryden Goodwin often combines intense observational drawing with moving image or photography. He exhibits internationally in galleries and museums, and his public art installations include Linear for Art on the Underground and the ongoing air pollution project Breathe. His films include the award-winning ’Unseen: The Lives of Looking’. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he is now a Professor.

Lachlan Goudie

Lachlan Goudie studied at Cambridge University and Camberwell College of Art in London. He has enjoyed a career as an artist, broadcaster, and writer on the history of art. As a figurative painter he works across a range of materials and genres, and is an elected member of the Royal Institute of Oil painters. His work is held in both national and regional collections.

Julia Midgley

A graphic artist and printmaker specialising in documentary drawing, Julia Midgley studied in Northwich and Manchester Schools of Art & Design. She has undertaken residencies at the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust, Liverpool John Moores University, the Stonehenge Riverside Project, and Aintree Racecourse. Her ‘War Art & Surgery’ collaboration with The Royal College of Surgeons recorded the rehabilitation of wounded servicemen and women. Her works are held in national and international museums.

Caroline Walker

Born in Dunfermline, Caroline Walker graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2004 and obtained an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2009. She is celebrated for her oil paintings that honour the often intimate and hidden lives of women in contemporary life. She is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York; GRIMM, Amsterdam / New York / London; and Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh.

Photograph of a white man sketching a ceremony in a large historic looking hall. The man is in the left of the image and has brown hair and wears a dark suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He is looking intently at his sketch book as he sketches the scene in the hall using pencil. He is resting his sketch book on a wooden banister in front of him. In the middle of the photograph is the ceremony the man is stretching. There is a raised red carpeted area in the middle of the floor space. In the centre of this is a box like shape covered in a purple fabric with a gold boarder at the bottom. The top of the box is also covered by a flag decorated in blue, gold, and red. Individuals wearing ceremonial red uniforms surround the red carpeted area and face outwards. There is a long line of people queuing to see the ceremony.
Lachlan Goudie sketching © House of Lords/Roger Harris

Art students

A number of students from London-based art colleges were also invited to sketch the public queues in Victoria Tower Gardens from 15th-17th September 2022. These were drawn from masters programmes at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Drawing School.  

Lying-in-State and the Parliamentary Art Collection

The Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth II took place at Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster.  

The Parliamentary Art Collection previously held eleven artworks dating from 1898 onwards, which record Lying-in-State occasions in the hall. Only three of these works, all relating to the 2002 Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, were commissioned by Parliament (House of Lords). The others were acquired from artists after the events had taken place. 

View some examples of artworks depicting the Lying-in-State of figures including Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Winston Churchill.

January 15, 2025