They should hang it in the kharzi

Sun photograher Arthur Edwards

In the portrait, she wears a severe expression, and her features are rendered heavily.

The painting has been described as "thought-provoking and psychologically penetrating" by the head of the National Portrait Gallery, Charles Saumarez-Smith.

The Royal Collection © Lucian Freud

Freud pulls no punches when painting himself

"The expression is of a sovereign who has endured not one annus horribilis but an entire reign of them. The Merry Monarch it isn't."

The Sun calls the portrait "a travesty".

The paper's royal photographer, Arthur Edwards, says: "They should hang it in the kharzi.

"Freud should be locked in the Tower for this."

Robert Simon, editor of the British Art Journal, tells the newspaper: "It makes her look like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke."

'Experience'

The Independent, however, says Freud's portrait is being hailed as the most honest representation of the monarch to date.

Under the headline "You're no oil painting, Ma'am", the Mirror says Freud could have saved the Queen the trouble of sitting for him by copying her Spitting Image puppet.

But the paper adds that the picture is "unmistakably his own", and says the Queen "should have known what to expect".

Meanwhile, Adrian Searle, the Guardian's art critic, hails Freud's picture as the best royal portrait for 150 years, and says: "Portraiture is meant to get beneath the skin.

"Freud has got beneath the powder, and that itself is no mean feat.

"Both sitter and painter have seen too much, are easily, stoically bored. They know the shape they're in.

"This is a painting of experience".

It is painful, brave, honest and stoical

The Times critic Richard Cork

The portrait was painted in the Royal Collection's Friary Court picture conservation studio at St James's Palace.

The sittings took place between May 2000 and December 2001.

Freud requested to paint the Queen in the famous Diamond Diadem that she wears when travelling to the State Opening of Parliament, and is depicted wearing on postage stamps and bank notes.