{"id":374258,"date":"2026-10-15T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374258\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T22:01:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T22:01:05","slug":"queen-sonja-reinvents-herself-after-king-haralds-death-in-one-striking-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374258\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Sonja reinvents herself after King Harald\u2019s death in one striking image"},"content":{"rendered":"

She\u2019s standing on scaffolding in a dark green work suit, a protective mask over her face and a spray gun in hand, putting the finishing glaze on a towering yellow-orange pot. It isn\u2019t the kind of picture royal courts usually release of a queen. But on Thursday, the Norwegian Royal House shared that image of Queen Sonja, and it may be the most telling portrait yet of how she\u2019s facing life after the death of her beloved husband, King Harald V.<\/p>\n

\"The\u00a9 Det Norske KongehusetThe Queen looked prepared as she wielded a paint brush and protected herself from the fumes with a face mask<\/p>\n

The occasion was the arrival of two new pieces at the\u00a0Queen Sonja Art Stable, the gallery that bears her name in Oslo. Each pot weighs around 800 pounds, and according to the Royal House, they\u2019re the largest Sonja has ever made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The queen created both in Denmark, and they\u2019ll now stand permanently in front of the gallery\u2019s entrance. Her inspiration, the palace noted, came from a much smaller pot in Queen Maud\u2019s collection, displayed in the 2025 exhibition \u201cAt the King\u2019s Table.\u201d<\/p>\n

The setting gives the moment its emotional weight. The Art Stable, housed in the Royal Palace\u2019s restored 19th-century stables, was King Harald\u2019s gift to his wife for her 80th birthday in 2017. According to Norway\u2019s TV 2, the gallery had been closed since the king died on August 28, and it reopens on Friday with the exhibition \u201cThreads in Time: From the National Tapestries to the King\u2019s Tapestry.”<\/p>\n

Seen that way, Sonja\u2019s monumental pots read as more than decoration. Installed at the door of a place Harald built for her, they feel like a quiet way of keeping his memory close through art, the passion that has guided most of her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The\u00a9 Det Norske KongehusetThe vases will be displayed on the outside of the museum that bears her name<\/p>\n

Art has filled a large part of Queen Sonja’s public calendar throughout her decades as queen. She has worked in ceramics for years, and in the hardest of times, the studio has been both a passion and refuge. Her return to that world marks the start of a new chapter, one that comes with a different position at court.<\/p>\n

In the weeks since Harald\u2019s death, there had been open questions about what role his widow would play under her son, King Haakon VIII<\/a>. Some of those answers have now arrived, and not all of them are small. Sonja keeps her title of queen, but in Norway she\u2019s no longer officially styled \u201cHer Majesty.” The royal court\u2019s website has also moved her out of the Royal House, which now includes only the king, the queen and Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Queen Sonja now enters the category of the wider royal family, alongside her grandson Prince Sverre Magnus and her daughter, Princess M\u00e4rtha Louise.<\/p>\n

None of it has kept her from the work. The official mourning period ended on October 9, and Sonja has been gradually stepping back into her public schedule, representing the family at Norway\u2019s National Archives earlier this week.<\/p>\n

\"The\u00a9 Det Norske KongehusetThe Queen was featured on some impressive images showing her painting two enormous vases
\nWhat comes next for the Queen<\/p>\n

Next, her resilience goes international, with a stop in Spain. On October 29, the queen will open \u201cMunch\u2013Picasso\u201d at the Museo Picasso M\u00e1laga, putting her love of art center stage once again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Curated by art historian Paloma Alarc\u00f3, the exhibition is the first to bring Edvard Munch<\/a> and Pablo Picasso into direct dialogue, with more than 100 paintings, drawings and prints exploring the themes the two masters shared: love and desire, illness, death, solitude and existential anxiety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Queen\u00a9 Det Norske KongehusetQueen Sonja has unveiled her latest ceramic works<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She\u2019s standing on scaffolding in a dark green work suit, a protective mask over her face and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,70330,63,122,124,123,4259],"class_list":["post-374258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-norwegian-royals","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-royals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}