BP Portrait Award 2020


Virtual version of the National Portrait Gallery annual exhibition for this portrait award.

This is usually one of the highlights of my viewing year so it feels very odd to have to view I online however it has been presented well to give a sense of walking round the show, how the pictures work together and an idea of their relative size. It took me a while to work how to navigate around the virtual space and it did seem to freeze on me once but once I got going it was quite easy. You click on the pictures to see a closer image and its label. They also offer the usual chance to vote for your favourite.

The unintentional themes this year seem to be realism and backgrounds often in the same picture. There were no weird abstract ones, so the show felt quite cohesive. In the realism camp with a lovely black and white portrait of Sir Lenny Henry by Martyn Burdon and Jamie Routley’s triptych of a sculptor friend from three angles with  the wonderful abstract pattern of clay on her apron.

In the background camp were the lovely third prize work “Labour of Love” by Michael Youd, a picture of Tommy Robertson, the owner of an independent music shop with all this stock piled up around him, and my favourite picture, shown here, of the designer Mary Ratcliffe by Sona Chew, with some of the clothes she had designed hanging up behind her. I love all the colours in this as well and the well painted sympathetic face.

This year’s contribution from the previous year’s Travel Award winner were lovely pictures of volunteers at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, both sketches and works finished back at the studio. I loved the jewel like colours of their clothing.

I do hope this show has a real life at some point in the future as I would like to see the pictures in the flesh to look at the brush strokes and details although sadly it probably won’t be at the National Portrait Gallery which I suspect will not reopen before it closes for refurbishment in the summer.

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