Westminster Abbey's Queen in residence Australian artist Ralph Heimans stands beside his portrait of the Queen in Westminster Abbey, where it will be on public display. AFTER a one-hour sitting with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace last year, Sydney artist Ralph Heimans made his way to Westminster Abbey. He'd had a revolutionary idea: to paint the British monarch outside her traditional site of portraiture - the palace's yellow drawing room - and to transpose her into the spot on which she had been crowned 60 years earlier. Tomorrow, Heimans's dramatic portrait of the Queen, unveiled in June last year as a gift for the monarch's Diamond Jubilee, will go on display in London for the first time after being acquired by Westminster Abbey. The acquisition - a rare occurrence for the ancient church - of the oil-on-canvas was announced yesterday. The 2.7m x 3.35m painting, which was unveiled at Canberra's National Portrait Gallery last year, will be on exhibition at the abbey's Chapter House until September 27. The acquisition of The Coronation Theatre, Westminster Abbey: Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was made possible by a donation from Philip Charles Harris, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. Heimans spent two days and two nights at the abbey, capturing its architectural detail and light before working from his photographic studies of the Queen to create the work in his London studio. "I wanted to take her out of her (traditional) environment, and put her in a different context," he told The Australian in June. I had a really strong image in my mind of what the portrait was going to be, and when I explained it to Her Majesty, she really seemed to understand what I was trying to do. A graduate of Sydney's Julian Ashton School of Art, Heimans is one of three prominent Australian artists to have painted the monarch: William Dargie and Rolf Harris painted Elizabeth in 1954 and 2005, respectively. Dargie's portrait, affectionately known as the Wattle Queen, is one of only two of 133 official portraits the monarch has in her possession. Most of the commissions - the first was painted in 1933 by Philip de Laszlo of the then seven-year-old Princess Elizabeth of York - are bought by galleries. Heimans's work was largely well received last year as part of the week-long Jubilee celebrations. The portrait commissions are often met with fierce criticism. Harris's and Lucian Freud's efforts were pilloried and the most recent offering - an expressionist work by Welsh artist Dan Llywelyn Hall unveiled earlier this month - was described as a "hideous cartoon" and "a shocking portrayal."