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Is that a Mona Lisa like smile the Queen has? It sure looks like it. What a great portrait!
The Annigoni portrait of the Queen wearing the Order of the Bath has long been one of my favourites from when I was a kid and first encountered the high values of the Hong Kong definitives in the '60s. We lived in the Lower Mainland area of B.C. (Vancouver suburbs), in Surrey. Back in those days, before there were 7 Eleven's everywhere, there were corner grocery stores, and more often than not, they were owned by people from Hong Kong.
I was a bold 7-year-old who thought nothing of asking people who obviously had family overseas to save stamps for me. We lived behind Peter's Store, owned by Peter Wong, and operated by him and his family: his two sons, Ken and Henry, and his wife, who couldn't speak English at all, and who was referred to as "Missy Wong".
A good trip to the store meant not only returning home with a chocolate bar, but also a handful of Hong Kong stamps, usually torn off parcels, and usually the higher values.
Funny enough, two values in this set always eluded me -- the $1.30 and the $20, although there would usually be total postage in the amount of around HK$35 on them.
Anyway, back to Annigoni; the portrait was painted for the Royal Society of Fishmongers (!) and behind the Queen, in the river can be seen a fisherman in a boat, if one looks carefully...
Posted 09/07/2009 09:41 am
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