WHY the critical fuss over Antony Williams's portrait of the Queen?

The 31-year-old artist has shown us a dignified if sometimes lonely woman who has worked beyond the point of pretty hands and worried for years about her job and her family.

And that is exactly the monarch we have.

She isn't an oil painting in any accepted sense of the term, she is a woman; a much criticised and blamed mother and wife who probably blames herself, sometimes unjustly, for many of her family's failings.

At the end of the day, she is stuck with her lot and reflects upon it, that reflection mirrored in this latest portrait.

If the artist falls into the trap of just slightly overdoing the least attractive features to hype up media interest, well, he also is the product of his mould.

Like a lot of quite good pictures, Mr Williams's is not one you would put over your own hearth.

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