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The portrait of the Queen is by Lucien Freud, to whom respectful apologies for the slight manipulation of it in this picture.  The portrait reproduction is a jpeg file downloaded from the BBC's website.  The cigarette comes from a photograph taken of a man smoking in a Brighton shop.  Freud's original is a powerful and uncompromising painting, comparable in many ways to a similarly small-sized portrait he did of his fellow painter Francis Bacon.  It has been reported that Freud has banned reproduction of his Queen portrait on the internet, though as of February 2002 there are illustrations of it on numerous sites.

Copyright © David Gray 2000-2004.  All rights reserved.