MAKING A MARK: Call for Entries: Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2025

Friday, December 13, 2024

Call for Entries: Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2025

You have one month left to get a portrait painted and enter the most prestigious portrait competition in the UK - the Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery

now sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills (and formerly known as the BP Portrait Award).
I now call it THE Portrait Award!

The highly successful competition aims to encourage artists over the age of eighteen to focus upon, and develop, the theme of portraiture in their work.

First of all, I have to apologise to regular followers for not highlighting this competition earlier. The announcement of the call for entries arrived at a different time of year to when it was normall published - and I unfortunately missed it.

By way of recompense, this post is all about the call for entries and is interspersed with my photos of past winners on the night they won their award!

However that said, let's get on with what you need to know.

Ben Sullivan -Winner in 2017
and the most successful ever artist in this competition

Summary of Key Information about the Call for Entries

Why enter The Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery?

I wrote two posts last year which

provides you with the incentives to enter - see WHY enter The Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery (London)
shows you who got selected in 2023 Selected Artists - HSF Portrait Award 2024 at the National Portrait Gallery

Since its inception, the competition has attracted over 40,000 entries from more than 100 countries and the exhibition has been seen by over 6 million people. It has a first prize of £35,000, making it one of the largest for any global arts competition.

DOWNLOAD the full competition rules (PDF).

if you get selected - which is itself a very valuable addition to any portrait painter's CV:

your portrait painting will hang in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 10 July until 12 October 2025
AND you could also win a valuable prize

first prize is £35,000
second prize is £12,000
third prize is £10,000
the Young Artist's Prize (for artists aged between 18 and 30) £9,000

anybody over the age of 18 (as of 1 January 2024) living anywhere in the world can enter this competition - except for previous first prize winners and those employed by the NPG or the prize's sponsors!

Daphne Todd - Winner in 2010
(Daphne was the then President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters)

all entries must be submitted

via a digital platform
by 22.00 (London) on Tuesday 14 January 2025

You MUST :

only submit ONE ENTRY at the competition portal page which

MUST be all your own work (e.g. there are no copyright issues)
MUST comply with the requirements for the artwork (summarised below)
have never been submitted to the competition before

upload the image of your entry which must be a JPG/JPEG image which does not exceed 3MB
observe all the rules of the competition
pay a fee of £40 by 22.00 (London) on Tuesday 14 January 2025

Entrants will be required to register for a secure artist account on the Gallery’s competition platform www.competitions.npg.org.uk.
Peter Monkman - Winner in 2009

if you get longlisted you will be

notified by 28 January 2025.
invited to send your portrait to London - to the judging venue between the 17 and 21 February, 2025 - for a second round of judging - in front of the portraits

if you get shortlisted for the exhibition:

you will be notified by 4 March 2025
your portrait will be exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London and be seen by c.250,000 people
you will be invited to the Press View on the morning of Wednesday 9 July 2025.

All artists chosen to exhibit in 2024 and 2025’s Portrait Award exhibitions will be considered for the inaugural Herbert Smith Freehills Artist Commission, which has a value of £14,000.

if you get shortlisted for a prize you MUST attend the Awards Ceremony on the evening of Tuesday 8 July 2025.

Miriam Escofet - Winner in 2018

What can you submit?

The work entered MUST

be predominantly painted in oil, tempera or acrylic and must be on a stretcher or board, preferably framed and unglazed. (No watercolours, works on paper or pastels will be considered).
be at least 25cm x 20cm unframed
be no bigger than 244cm x 244cm framed.
multi part works will be accepted and counted as one entry but

the complete artwork MUST comply with the overall size requirements
the entry MUST include one image of the entire work presented as one artwork

NOT have a signature on the front (i.e. all artwork is judged anonymously - the Judges do not know who submitted the work.

The work SHOULD be a painting based on a sitting or study from life and the human figure must predominate.

You can enter:

self portraits
group portraits

Craig Wylie - Winner in 2008

Judges and Judging

There are two rounds of Judging

the first is online and means you MUST focus on submitting a very good quality image of your portrait as defined in the rules - i.e it must NOT be digitally enhanced
the second involved the physical portrait being presented to a Panel of Judges

No announcement has been made as yet as to who are the Judges for this award in 2025. Which is odd, because they always used to be announced in the past and, in my opionion, who is judging is a critical consideration to all those wanting to enter.

Thomas Ganter - Winner in 2014

Delivery and collection of artwork

There is LOTS of detail about how delivery and collection of artwork works

The ONLY artists delivering artwork will be those invited to do so because they "passed" the longlisting online selection.

You MUST deliver the artwork to the judging venue - by post, courier or in person - between 9am and 5pm on the following dates: 17–21 February 2025.

all hand deliveries should be left without any protective packaging
all mailed artworks can be sent in protective packaging - but this will not be retained and you need to organise artwork being collected/repackaged/returned to you if your portrait is not selected

the address of the London Judging Venue will only be provided to longlisted artists after the first round of judging (i.e. do not turn up on spec as you won't know where to go!) PS This won't be the National Portrait Gallery!
all INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS should pay close attention to the requirements set out in SECTION 7 of the RULES which include

If works are being shipped by courier, artists must take full responsibility for all costs, including any import customs charges and duties. When sending works from abroad the artist should not tick the box advising the courier company to bill the recipient. Equally on the return of any work from the UK the artist should not tick the box indicating that the transport will be paid by the sender. The Gallery will not cover these costs and will instruct the shipper to contact the artist directly for payment.

If your work is not selected you have a limited window of time to arrange for its collection, repacking and delivery back to you.

Commissions

Antony Williams - Winner in 2024

The National Portrait Gallery in London has a commitment to commission and collect portraits of those who have made an important contribution to British history and culture.

The arrangements about commissions has changed.

Essentially a commission worth £14,000 will now awarded every two years
ANY of the artists who are selected for the exhibitions in a two year period (2024 AND 2025) will be eligible for that commission

This is a HUGE bonus for any artists who are selected for the exhibition. It's certainly been the practice in the past for artists selected for the exhibition to be asked to commissions - but this now formalises it. For example, Antony Williams was commissioned to do a portrait back in 2003.

I rather think this has happened as more and more of the artists who won were international artists and hence their ability to visit and stay to paint "an important UK person" who has contributed to British history and culture became something of a challenge.

This is my post about Winners of the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Award + Commissions

MORE INFORMATION about this competition in previous years