BP Portrait Award 2017

Excellent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to mark this year’s BP Portrait Award.

If you read me regularly you’ll know I love this annual show and I think this years’ was particularly good. A lot of the pictures had a more realistic feel than some years and there were less abstract works. As in previous years there seemed to be quite a lot of egg tempura pictures including a lovely one of a young girl by Madeline Fenton and the third prize winner Anthony Williams’s lovely picture made up of tiny brush strokes making up the skin tone and hair of a nude figure.

I loved Silvestre Goikoetxa’s wonderful treatment of spectacles and how they change the light around the eyes. Also Claire Eastgate’s picture of Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, two poets, sitting on a sofa with the words of their poems on the wall behind. Alan Coulson’s “Honest Thomas” had a lovely blend of the detailed pattern of the tattoos on this arm with the pattern on his t-shirt.

My favourite picture, shown here, was actually the first one I saw by Paul P Smith of Norman Lamb MP which showed him a great striped scarf and with a lovely pale green background. I particularly loved the wonderful veiled hands.

Closes on 24 September 2017.

Review
Evening Standard

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