Royal Portraitist Gives Jane Goodall the Royal Treatment, Technically Speaking

Renowned royal portrait artist Ralph Heimans stepped out of the palace corridors and into the Tanzanian bush for a very different kind of summit – a final meeting with Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee family.

The celebrated Australian painter, best known for painting monarchs, accompanied the late anthropologist on her last ever trip to Tanzania, where she revisited the chimpanzees that defined her career. The result is a painting that treats a leading scientist with the same formal reverence usually reserved for heads of state.

Heimans didn’t simply photograph the scene from a distance; he set up his easel on the forest floor, sharing the same ground as the chimps and the late Goodall. The canvas captures the quiet dignity of the moment, a visual tribute to a life spent listening to the forest.

There are no quotes from the chimpanzees – they’re not known for press conferences – and, of course, none from Goodall herself, as she has passed away. Yet the portrait stands as a memorial, a final homage to a woman whose work reshaped our understanding of the animal kingdom.

The irony of a royal portraitist painting a scientist in the jungle adds a layer of delightful absurdity. One can only imagine the brief: “Capture the essence of the subject, but keep the background from looking like a swamp.”