The first official portrait of Duchess Catherine Middleton as a royal, has been released by the National Portrait Gallery on Friday with having conflicting opinions on the artwork.

The painting was completed by Paul Emsley, who took the honor to be the 2007 winner of the Gallery's BP Portrait Award competition. This piece of art has been out and ready to be viewed in three and a half months after Middleton's two sittings for the portrait in May and June of last year.

According to Reuters' report, the National Portrait Gallery staff said that the royal family visited in the morning and were "very pleased" with the portrait. Middleton highly praised it as "absolutely brilliant" and Prince William told the portrait "absolutely beautiful".

"Her family are also very pleased," Emsley added. "To me that's the ultimate test in a way, because they know her better than anyone else."
Artist Paul Emsley said he followed the royal mom-to-be’s instructions “to be portrayed naturally — her natural self — as opposed to her official self.”

“She struck me as an enormously open and generous and a very warm person,” Emsley said. “After initially feeling it was going to be an unsmiling portrait I think it was the right choice in the end to have her smiling — that is really who she is.”

Contrary to the royals' admiration, the portrait has received harsh criticism from artists and the public.

“He made her look older than she is and her eyes don’t sparkle in the way that they do and there’s something rather dour about the face,” Waldemar Januszczak, art critic for The Sunday Times, told BBC News.

Robin Simon, editor of the British Art Journal and a Daily Mail art critic, said "Fortunately, the Duchess of Cambridge looks nothing like this in real life. I'm really sad to say this is a rotten portrait."

There were Kate’s parents Carole and Michael Middleton and her brother and sister Pippa and James as guests who accompanied the royal couple in the day.