Imagine a leader. What do you see? How are they presented? What are they wearing? Are they up on a platform or down on the ground? In uniform or in a dress? Are they regal and smart? Full frontal or turned to the side? If it’s a woman, what comes to mind? Last week, Theresa May’s official portrait, by the Persian-born British-based painter Saied Dai, was unveiled. I don’t know what I was expecting – but it definitely wasn’t this. At first glance, I found her appearance cold and androgynous, the style evoking that of wartime with its muddying palette and sharp angular shapes. The more I sat with it, the more I realised how good a painting it was, with incredible psychological insight into its subject and the times in which we are living.
I was in my early 20s when May was leader. I saw her as a stern ruler who was detrimental to our future with Europe. She had no dynamism or imagination, just strict, staunch policies and that metronomic “Brexit means Brexit”, which now feels like a lifetime ago. Yet here I see her portrayed as both powerful and timid. Dressed in a blue suit, layered with a navy coat, her flesh barely visible, May stands stoically and silently. In her left hand, she clutches a lily of the valley flower signifying the month of May – or is it referencing the wheat she loved to run through? There’s a flash of gold, too, with her wedding ring and hints at her femininity with her red nails.
The former PM’s gaze is far from warm and her stance feels awkward. While she clearly wants to be seen, there’s something holding her back, evident in the right arm crossing her middle as if to protect herself. May’s body is concealed by thick, nondescript fabrics that mirror the opaqueness of the green curtain behind, and not unlike the backdrop of Agnolo Bronzino’s 1550–55 portrait of pageboy Lodovico Capponi. Dai encourages us to read this figure as someone who was determined to be militant, her pose emulating Napoleon’s in the 1812 official portrait by Jacques-Louis David. Yet she seems trapped, thwarted by her failure to win the Battle of Brexit.
For me, this portrait also raises bigger questions about what a powerful woman looks like, and how women in politics should be presented in art. In the London Review of Books in 2017, Mary Beard wrote that we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man. The suit, although a “simple tactic”, is a symbol of patriarchy, a way to make the female more male. Alternatively, there are the “abusers rather than users of power”: Medea, Clytemnestra, Antigone. But they are far from role models. So where in art can we see a strong female leader who reflects her times and is depicted in a more nuanced way?
In the 16th century, Elizabeth I was painted wearing rich, sumptuous garments and adorned with jewels and finery, the subtext being that women couldn’t be powerful through their bodies alone. But now it seems that, to be taken seriously as a leader, one must appear masculine, shunning all feminine qualities.
If we look at portraits of May’s contemporaries, we see that their power is also communicated in complex ways. Angela Merkel, to mark being Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2015 and her 10th year in office, was immortalised by Colin Davidson. The painter said Merkel “can appear to be a quite bland and almost cold person, but what I wanted to get across was her humanitarian stance. I wanted to portray the human being behind the politician.” Davidson captures a warmth in her eyes, but just focuses on her face. Why does he not want to paint her body? Is it because, echoing Beard’s remarks about templates, he knows that would muddy the waters?
The antithesis of May’s portrait is Amy Sherald’s official first lady portrait of Michelle Obama. Triumphant yet approachable, Obama looks at us with a gaze full of wisdom. Not shielding herself from us, she appears present, her arms exposed as if sharing her vulnerability. She is a template of dignity and sophistication. While this might be a groundbreaking portrait for women in power, would things be different if she was the president and not the first lady?
The female leader doesn’t just have to overcompensate with high-status jewels or a masculinising suit, but with how she rules, too. “I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,” said Elizabeth I, “but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” Over 400 years, what has changed? Clearly some female politicians still have a desire to be seen as a strong “man-like” woman, from the vicious determination May could show, to Hilary Clinton’s macho 2008 boast that the US could “totally obliterate” Iran. During her first term, Margaret Thatcher, perhaps fearing that femininity could be associated with weakness, said: “I owe nothing to women’s lib.”
May’s portrait captures so much of this complexity: striving for the militant stance in the suit, but still hiding from herself, having tried to fit the image of someone she’s not. If only we had more dignified women in power, such as former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, then we would be more comfortable seeing a woman as a woman rather than cosplaying as a man. We might get better, more compassionate leadership, too, and the resulting portraits would be normalised and immediate.
