Something exciting occurred at Sandringham on Christmas Day, 2024. Eleanor Ekserdjian walked to church with the Royal Family. Now that may not seem like a lot, but in fact it is. Girlfriends are not that privileged. You have to be in a relationship of engagement or marriage. Kate Middleton held off until her marriage in 2011. Same with Sophie Rhys-Jones – she didn’t go until she’d married Prince Edward.
But then along came Eleanor, 28, gliding to St Mary Magdalene Church with her boyfriend, Samuel Chatto. She dressed for the occasion, wearing a black dress under an oatmeal coat and a smart beret. Samuel wore the Highgrove scarf that King Charles had presented to relatives the previous year. They looked comfortable together. Natural.
The whispers about engagement rings began almost immediately. Can you blame them? The only other girlfriend in recent memory to get that Christmas invite before the wedding was Meghan Markle, in 2017. Five months later, she wed Prince Harry.
Who Actually Is She?
Eleanor Ekserdjian was born in London on August 22, 1996, so yes, now she is 28. Her dad is David Ekserdjian, and if you’re into art history, you’ll probably know that name.
He’s a professor at the University of Leicester who specialises in Italian Renaissance art. Proper clever bloke. He’s been involved with the National Gallery and the Tate over the years.
Her mum, Susan Moore, writes about art for the Financial Times. Growing up, her house probably had more books about Caravaggio than most libraries. But she’s not just hitching her wagon to her parents’ star. Eleanor’s done this on her own.
She spent five years at the University of Edinburgh from 2014 to 2019 doing a master’s in Fine Art. The course split things fifty-fifty between making art and learning its history. That’s when she met Sam. Of course, he had left by then – Samuel graduated from Edinburgh in 2021 with a History of Art degree.
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What She Does With Paint and Film
Right, so Eleanor’s art is a bit different. She’s not sitting in front of a canvas with watercolours. What she does is project films onto paper or canvas, then draws over them while they’re playing. She’s responding in the moment to what she sees.
She’s particularly keen on silent films. Those old movies from the 1920s and 1930s, where people had to show everything through their faces and bodies.
Eleanor watches the terror, the joy, and the fear on screen, and her hand moves fast, making marks that capture those emotions. She calls the finished pieces “lyrical landscapes of anxiety”.
In 2021, Eleanor joined the Royal Drawing School – two years after Samuel had been there himself.
Then she went off to Armenia for a six-week residency, which sounds brilliant. Imagine getting to spend over a month in another country just making art and soaking up the culture.
Her work’s been shown at some decent galleries in London. The Redfern Gallery has displayed her pieces. So has Gallery 286 and Seen Fifteen Gallery. People actually buy her work, too, which is no small thing for a young artist. Several private collections now have her paintings.
She even painted Samuel once. The piece was just called “SAM”, and it got picked for The Gallery at Green & Stone’s summer exhibition. I think that’s quite sweet – using your boyfriend as a model.
When People Started Noticing
After Christmas Day, Eleanor turned up again with Samuel on 5th August 2025 at the Mey Highland Games in Scotland. She wore a tweed blazer and black midi skirt, whilst Samuel matched King Charles in a tartan kilt.
Lady Sarah Chatto, Samuel’s mum, was there too. It was proper Scottish, with all the pageantry and tradition you’d expect.
Then on 4th November 2025, the family went to Somerset House together for the opening of “Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies”.
Eleanor wore a simple black dress while Lady Sarah had on a navy coat and d pearl necklace. It’s the kind of event this family would naturally go to – they’re all creative types.
Nobody’s saying anything official about weddings or engagements. Samuel and Eleanor keep things private, which is fair enough. But people are definitely watching.
More Than Just Samuel’s Girlfriend
Here’s the thing – Eleanor had already been working as an artist for years before anyone outside the art world knew her name.
She’s written about film for The Article and Standpoint magazine as a freelance journalist. So she knows her stuff from both sides: making art and writing about it.
Samuel and Eleanor have loads in common. They both went to Edinburgh. They both studied art-related subjects. They both went to the Royal Drawing School.
Samuel’s a ceramicist who travelled to Japan in 2023 to study under a porcelain master named Yagi Akira for months. His mum, Lady Sarah, exhibits her paintings at the Redfern Gallery – yes, the same one that shows Eleanor’s work. His dad, Daniel Chatto, used to act, but now he paints.
It’s a family that gets what it means to make things with your hands. To spend hours in a studio working on something that might not turn out right. Eleanor fits in because she understands that world already. She was born into it.
What Makes Her Work Stand Out
Eleanor describes herself as “a painter and film artist whose practice blends moving images with rapid mark-making.” That’s the formal description. In simpler terms, she watches films, projects them onto surfaces, and draws what she feels whilst watching them.
Her interest in silent cinema makes sense when you think about it. Those films had no dialogue, so everything had to come through visual storytelling.
The actors used their entire bodies to show emotion. Eleanor responds to that visual language through her rapid drawing. She’s having a conversation with films made nearly a hundred years ago.
After her Armenian residency, her work changed. She started thinking more about diaspora, about what it means to be from somewhere but living somewhere else. That experience clearly stuck with her.
The Royal Connection Nobody Expected
Samuel’s grandmother was Princess Margaret. He’s King Charles’s second cousin. He’s 30th in line to the throne, which means he’s royal but not royal enough that anyone’s really bothered about what he does. He can just make pottery in his West Sussex studio without much fuss.
But bringing Eleanor to Sandringham on Christmas Day? That got attention. The Daily Mail wrote about it. So did Hello magazine, the Scottish Daily Express, Marie Claire, and loads of others. Because it breaks tradition. Because it means something.
Will there be a wedding in 2025 or 2026? Nobody knows except Samuel and Eleanor. They’re not talking. But the fact that she’s been included in family events three times now – Christmas, the Highland Games, and Somerset House – suggests this is serious.
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An Artist In Her Own Right
At 28, Eleanor’s already established herself. Her work is in private collections. She’s had exhibitions. She’s developed her own technique that’s distinctly hers. Whether she ends up with a connection to the Royal Family or not, she’s built something real.
The attention might be annoying for her. Most artists want people talking about their work, not about who they’re dating.
But she seems to handle it with grace. She shows up to these events looking put-together but not showy. She smiles but doesn’t try to grab the spotlight.
Eleanor Ekserdjian is creating art that matters to her. She’s found someone who shares her values and passions.
Everything else – the speculation, the headlines, the wondering about rings – that’s just noise. What matters is the work. And from what her galleries say, that work is getting better all the time.
