The manipulation of royal photographs is nothing new. Official photos have been tweaked all the way down the decades – to flatter the sitter, of course.
In January 1852, Queen Victoria asked fashionable London photographer William Kilburn to capture her sitting with her five eldest children.
As with Kate’s Mother’s Day photo the children posed on either side of her, but unlike Kate, the resulting image showed Victoria sitting with her eyes closed.
She looked a fright – and was duly unamused.
The Mother’s Day picture that caused a storm for the Prince and Princess of Wales
Another royal picture showing the late Queen with her great grandchildren was found to have been manipulated. Some of the many tell-tale signs that the original had been altered have been circled
With nine children and 40 grandchildren, group shots of Queen Victoria and her family were hard to organise. Particularly in the later part of her reign, photographers would resort to trickery
By the end of her long life, Victoria’s loyal photographers would retouch the images. They trimmed her waist, removed her wrinkles, the bags under her eyes and one of her double chins. They also added extra hair
‘Mine was unfortunately horrid, but the children’s were pretty,’ she commented.
Not wishing anyone to see such lese majeste, Victoria scratched her face off the daguerreotype image – the first known example of royal photo-editing.
With nine children – and, eventually, 40 grandchildren – group shots of the Queen and her family were a logistical nightmare.
Agencies and newspaper editors would resort to photo montages showing the elderly monarch surrounded by her descendants at a reunion that never actually occurred.
By the end of her long life, Victoria’s loyal photographers retouched the images they had taken, trimming her waist, removing her wrinkles along with the bags under her eyes and one of her double chins, as well as adding extra hair.
Thanks to their skill, Victoria, by then well into her seventies, looked fresh faced in her official Diamond Jubilee official photograph.
The diminutive monarch who stood at less than five feet tall, grew in height for the cameras by standing on a box.
Victoria’s daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra, was another who tried to maintain her youthful looks well into old age by persuading photographers to retouch her images.
The official photos of her 1902 Coronation occasion made 57-year-old Alexandra, look several years’ younger.
The wife of Edward VII often appeared as smooth skinned and slender-waisted as her three daughters in family portraits.
Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, was almost 39 when Cecil Beaton took an iconic set of images at Buckingham Palace.
To the casual observer, the pictures suggest a woman of 30. Thanks, of course, to flattering retouches by the society photographer.
‘Can you do a lot afterwards?’ the Queen had asked, which was more or less a royal decree.
Equally flattering images emerged from a post-war sitting when she was a matronly 48.
Victoria’s daughter-in-law, Alexandra, tried to maintain her youthful appeal well into old age, asking photographers to retouch her images. In this 1902 portrait, Alexandra is wears the crown which was created specially for her Coronation and features the Koh-i-Noor diamond
In some family portraits, Alexandra, seated, could seem as smooth-skinned and slender-waisted as her three daughters
‘Over many years every photograph of the Queen Mother taken by Beaton and chosen for publication was retouched,’ said her biographer, Michael De-La-Noy.
Beaton used natural light, shining through the future Queen Mother’s crinoline dresses to create a slimming effect.
Another royal favourite, Norman Parkinson, used what he called ‘magic light’ to soften the features of his royal sitters.
Princess Margaret was photographed by ‘Parks’ in the summer of 1978 to mark her forthcoming tour of Tuvalu.
It was commented upon at the time that she looked fresh-faced and somewhat younger than her 48 years – suspiciously so.
Two years later he photographed Margaret with her mother and sister in a memorable set of images to commemorate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday.
Taken at the Royal Lodge at Windsor, Parks used the sunlight as well as fill-in flash to create a flattering image
When it came to photographs of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, one oft-repeated approach was to superimpose two separate images (taken at the same session), one on top of the other.
This can be seen, for example in the commission Parkinson carried out for the Post Office – to be used on a set of stamps that mark their Silver Wedding in 1972.
The Queen’s photographer cousin, Patrick Lichfield, used the same trick in Nov 2001 at a sitting to mark the forthcoming Golden Jubilee of 2002.
Again two separate photos were taken – this time digital ones – and then super-imposed.
Lord Lichfield also took a memorable group shot of the extended royal family at Windsor during the Christmas holidays of 1971 to mark the Queen’s forthcoming silver wedding.
There wasn’t enough room to take one single photograph, so Lichfield took three separate shots of the group and then skilfully joined them together into one composite.
By the dawn of the new millennium, increased use of digital photography made such manipulation comparatively easy.
According to biographer Michael De-La-Noy, all Beaton’s published photographs of the Queen Mother had been retouched
Another royal favourite, Norman Parkinson, used ‘magic light’ to soften the features of his royal sitters
A quarter of a century before the Prince of Wales took the troublesome Mother’s Day photo, William himself the subject of headlines when he was digitally manipulated at his uncle Edward’s wedding to Sophie Rhys-Jones.
Unlike the Kate photos there was no media storm and the story was treated in a light-hearted way by the media
The photographer who took the official family photo was Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, who was married to the Queen’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth Anson.
He said Prince Edward decided his nephew “was not looking his best”, so the photo was digitally altered to replace William’s face with one from another shot where he is smiling.
In an interview on ITN News, Shakerley claimed
‘Prince Edward said he didn’t think Prince William looked absolutely his best, so digitally we were able to put in another picture of Prince William from one of the other shots where he is smiling and laughing.’
The Princess of Wales is an skilled amateur photographer.
Having studied art history at the University of St Andrews she is a natural when it comes to composition, the use of colour and the the ability to relax the sitter.
While her photographs of William and their children, as well as those of the Charles and Camilla and the late Queen and Prince Philip have been widely praised, one or two have been criticised for less than professional photo-editing.
In the summer of 2022 Kate took an iconic photo of the late Queen taken at Balmoral in the last weeks of her life, and released in April 2023 to mark what would have been the late Queen’s 97th birthday.
A repeated theme with photos of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip was to superimpose one photograph over another
While many applauded the informal shot which showed Queen Elizabeth with two of her grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, the photo prompted some negative comments from the public.
Yet many felt that cutting and pasting the photo would have been necessary to as getting ten small children to pose happily is akin to herding cats.
More importantly Kate would not have wanted to put William’s frail grandmother through a long photo session.
And, as we have seen, it was nothing new.
