The Queen has sat for more than 120 artists, including Lucian Freud and Pietro Annigoni. This time the cameras will roll as Her Majesty sits for the popular art evangelist as he dabs away at an oil portrait marking the landmark birthday next April.

Buckingham Palace said that the Queen agreed to the Australian’s request to paint her for a BBC One Rolf on Art special because she recognised his achievements in bringing famous works to life for a mass audience.

Harris, who last year re-created Constable’s The Hay Wain in Trafalgar Square, hopes that his brush doesn’t slip. “I am overwhelmed and hope I don’t get stage fright and panic,” the artist said.

The Queen will sit for Harris this summer before she leaves for Balmoral. A Palace spokesman said: “As with her other portraits, the style, dress and backdrop is the artist’s prerogative.”

Viewers will see the dialogue between poised but possibly wary subject and chuntering artist as the portrait develops. It is unlikely to attract the controversy of Freud’s 2001 work.

Harris, 75, said: “I am thrilled to bits, hoping that I do a painting that is representational of the way the Queen looks and her obvious charm and friendly quality.”

The Animal Hospital presenter is seeking to gain a psychological insight through the brush. “I want to get the real person rather than the state image,” he said. “I’d like to make my painting more impressionistic than photographic.”

Harris’s claims as a Renaissance man are unquestionable, with music hits including Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport and television shows such as It’s Rolf on Saturday OK? to Test Your Pet.

But he is no mug with a brush, as the seven million viewers of Rolf on Art can attest. A recent survey found that one in 14 people thinks that Harris was responsible for Monet’s Water Lilies.

Harris attended the City & Guilds of London Art School during the 1950s. His paintings have been exhibited in the National Gallery and at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy. In 2000 he received honorary membership of the Royal Society of British Artists.

A clue to the royal portrait could be the inspiration on the Perth-born Harris of the Australian Impressionist Hayward Veal, who encouraged him to develop his characteristic free-flowing style.

Harris said: “He gave me a brush, some burnt sienna, some rag and a bottle of turpentine and told me to see how little paint I could use. Instead of painting isolated individual parts he told me to tackle the whole canvas all the time. I still do this now, starting off very rough and rugged and then refining later.”

As Harris tackles his own portrait of the Queen, he will explore the history of royal portraiture, examining paintings of monarchs through time and the artists who painted them.

Harris said: “My hero painting of the Queen was one done by William Dargie in 1954 and I just hope I can do one as charming and representative of the lady as that.”

The final portrait will be owned by the BBC, and Buckingham Palace said that it was up to the corporation to decide how it will be unveiled and where it will hang.

A spokesman for the Palace added: “The Queen was pleased to agree to Mr Harris’s request. He is a well-known presenter with an excellent reputation for making art accessible.” The spokesman said the Royal Collection did not possess any Harrises. The finished work will be revealed in a BBC One special broadcast to coincide with the Queen’s 80th birthday on April 21 next year. Peter Fincham, BBC One Controller, said: “It’s a huge coup for the BBC to be able to show Rolf painting such a great supporter of the arts.”

Rolf on Art, in which the host replicates the methods of the world’s best-known painters, is watched by more people than any other BBC arts programme.

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