Kensington Palace, London — June 2021RCIN 2119727 · RCIN 2119728 · RCIN 2119729
It is with great pride that I share that three further portraits of His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent — photographed in Royal Air Force uniform — have been accepted into the Royal Collection. They join the Field Marshal portraits as part of a body of thirteen works from my non-profit archive now preserved within that collection.
This second sitting with His Royal Highness was held at Kensington Palace in June 2021. Where the 2018 portraits recorded the Duke as a Field Marshal of the British Army, here I sought to document his long association with the Royal Air Force, in which he holds senior honorary rank. Few sitters can be photographed across the services of the Crown, and to record the Duke in this second uniform was to add a further chapter to a single, continuous story of royal service.
I approached the session with the same restraint that governs all my royal work: sculptural, directional light, a composition free of excess, and the patience to let presence speak for itself. The intention was to honour the man and the office without spectacle — a contemporary record made in dialogue with the great tradition of British service portraiture.
These portraits exist because of the supporters of the Rory Lewis Non-Profit. Your donations cover the printing and production of the archival prints and their placement, free of charge to the sitters, in permanent public collections — and they are what enable me to keep working alongside serving personnel and veterans. To support the archive, please visit rorylewis.studio/non-profit.
