MAKING A MARK: Portrait Award 2025 (Part 1) What's changed and what's not

This is my review of the HSFK Portrait Award 2025 Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery - sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehill Kramer - and its Awards Ceremony.

The view as you enter The Portrait Award Exhibition

It covers:

how you can see the Portrait Award Exhibition - in person or online
what's changed, what's not and what needs to!
what I like - and what I'm less enthusiastic about

At the end are notes about

Why I write about the Portrait Award - a short note about my personal history with this exhibition
followed by all the blog posts I've written about it in the last 18 years - since 2007! ( I haven't counted - but it's a lot!)

My next two posts are:

Portrait Award 2025 (Part 2): Artists with their Paintings - which I know is much appreciated (hopefully on Sunday) and
Portrait Award 2025 (Part 3): "My 10 best portrait paintings in the 2025 exhibition - after I've been back to the exhibition and seen it again (probably next week) and studied the paintings in more depth. If I have time I'll also be adding in more analysis as I've done in the past around:

size, format and colour
type of model
type of portrait

How to see the Portrait Award Exhibition

The Portrait Award Exhibition can be seen

in Gallery 2 (the very far end of the second floor)
at the National Portrait Gallery in London
from 10th July (today) until 12th October 2025.

The exhibition then travels to

the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.
from 28 March – 5 September 2026

You can also see it online in the Visitor's Choice Section where you can also vote for your favourite portrait.

How the numbers have changed

First of all - an important observation which may have escaped some people.

In the last 10 years, the number of entries and artists and portraits hung seem to keep on reducing.
the number of entries have halved
the number of countries sending entries has reduced by a third.
the number of artists selected have reduced from 55 to 46
Bottom line: The number of portraits now hung is a lot less than it used to be.

Everytime the NPG reduces the numbers hung I'm very much of the view that this makes it less likely that those entering will get hung - and at some point they start asking "what's the point?".

Around 50-55 was the norm for a very long time. This year it is just 46 paintings.

Is it a less prestigious competition and exhibition? What's the rationale for cutting numbers?

Compare how the numbers have dropped

2025: Those hung this year were selected from 1,314 entries from 61 countries.

This compares to (reaching for my past blog posts and annual analysis)

2012: 2,187 entries received from artists in 74 different countries
2013: 1,969 entries from 77 different countries
2015: 2,748 entries from artists in 92 countries

I suggest somebody has a very long hard think about the target number of artworks to be hung if they want to retain the prestige of this competition.

Review of the Exhibition

I'm finding as I get older that the effort invested in 2 x 2 hours on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning - plus associated social media posting (eg write a blog post between getting up at 6am on Wednesday and shooting out the door to get to the press preview by 10am) leaves me a lot more tired now that I'm 70 than it did when I was in my 50s.

The process is identical - get round as many of the 40+ artists present, take their photos, hear their story and learn about their painting - but the effort and concentration involved tends to leave me feeling slightly "wired" - as if I'd had rather a lot of coffees! Then on the third day, I end up feeling tired - which is today!

Which makes it quite interesting trying to work out what the story is re this exhibition - beyond the story of the numbers.

If you want an alternative perspective, the review in The Times is good on the range of painterly approaches (but you have to pay to see).

Interestingly there are incredibly few other reviews online compared to the number of journalists there on Wednesday morning - and my guess is none of them are writing for the aspiring artist!

What has stayed the same and what has changed?

The exhibition continues to display a wide range of styles, shapes and sizes. It's not so much anything goes as "if your portrait is good enough it will be picked".

However, having said that I'd love to see a "Not picked for the Portrait Award" website of all the digital images that were submitted. In other words, I'd love to see what the Judges felt able to pass on.

Small through to large sizes of portraits

There again, for every generalisation, there are exceptions! Lack of colour is certainly not true of all......

Bigger and Big - with colour
(First Prize is the one on the left)

I never ever pretend to like all the styles. However some do catch my attention.

There are some very big paintings. Not a lot - but they all have IMPACT irrespective of their size. I was amazed to see the winner's painting (above - on the left) is as big as it is.

It made a LOT more sense to me when Moira Cameron, the first prize winner, told me

I'm really a painter not a portrait artist. The portrait comes out of what I do pushing the paint around.

So is it a self portrait? Which is what it was 40 years ago when she was student - before she "remade it' last year. Or is it essentially a painting of an experience of a lifetime which happens to have a figure in it? I'm still not sure - but the emphasis on painting rather than portraiture helped me to "get it".

On a neighbouring wall at the end of the Gallery, there is another large painting at completely the other end of the spectrum in terms of hue and tone and degree of figurative realism

The end of the gallery - with just one very large self portrait occupying just one wall

Colour seems to have changed - and to be largely subdued this year. Quite a lot of the paintings this year tends to be quite toned down and leaning hard towards monochromatic (or so it seems when I look back at my pictoral record.) Some are positively dark in different ways.

Note how many neutral tones are around in the photos I'm posting. That flash of viridian (above) is most unusual in this exhibition.

I assume from this that we had a set of Judges who like neutrals much more than they like colour.

Much leaning towards monochrome

Darks and lights

In terms of change, there's also quite a bit of what feels to be deliberately intentional diversity present in terms of skin colour and gender fluidity. Which given all the policy changes of late is maybe not surprising.

What I liked

This is where I'm looking for things that caught my eye.

In an exhibition which is quite subdued in colour terms - anything with colour stands out!

However I'm also a fan of the very complex. This is also a portrait of the Sculptor's studio - because of the amount of "stuff" in the portrait - such as with the messy plaster spattered studio of the sculptor in Dide's portrait below. It's got a lot of texture - and a lot of thought has been given to its composition! (Incidentally Dide is one the RBA's Rising Star Rome Scholarship artists from 2023 and 2024)

Portrait of a Sculptor (2024) By Dide
Oil on canvas

The complex spatial composition, from the background mirror to the looming boot in the foreground, creates a sense of disorientation. Responding to the sitter’s work and persona, the portrait incorporates maquettes of Edward’s sculptures and explores ‘the messy plaster-splattered existence of artists in their studios’. Textual narrative

Sometimes, you notice portrais because it seems to be very "in your face" - such as Kevin Kane's take on a fellow Scot. (You'll get to see both of them - in their kilts - in Artists with their Paintings)

Lord and Master ( 2024) by Kevin Kane
Oil on board,

This striking portrait was created after the artist and sitter met at a charity event. ‘Immediately connecting over shared experiences as gay Catholics growing up in suburban Glasgow,’ Kevin Kane explores sexuality while referencing the artist and sitter’s Scottish connection through traditional wear and Scotch whisky. The books serve as ‘meaningful references to our common background and the stories that shaped us.

Somebody on the Judges likes paintings painted from a different perspective - and I like that too. So we have:

a portrait of the back of somebody - there is no face - and that is apparently OK!
a portrait of somebody who is recreating Van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait - with a self portrait of the artist in a small mirror held by somebody at the bottom of the stairs and enormously complex perspective.

Both of which will feature in Artists with their paintings.

What's missing?

A Group Painting Prize

To my mind what is missing is more paintings which are deliberately about more than one person - which is a very great pity.

I have said, for a long time, that what is missing in the UK is a proper prize for those who can paint portraits of groups of people. It's not as if there aren't lots of portraits of groups in the NPG (eg The Selecting Jury of the New English Art Club, 1909) or that commissions are not handed out to paint groups and teams.

However , when I came to count there are six paintings with more than one person - some of which are worth highlighting as they is so very striking and unusual. (More on this topic in Artists with their Paintings next)

Ollie and Orlando (The New York Couple), 2024
by Lucille Dweck

Paintings of children
(Left) Inset Day by Yvadney Davis (about a mother and daughter)
(right) Vu and Sao, 2025 by Nguyen Kim Tuyen

Plus there are four more:
Mother, 2024 by Diego José Aznar Remón (mother and baby)
Vu and Sao, 2025 by Nguyen Kim Tuyen
Light and Shadow, 2025 by Shinji Ihara (two gay men)
plus an odd one - one man and his three dogs! Old Friends or Familiar Faces, 2025 by Ant Carver

Most of what else has changed relates to how it's organised. So, for example:

no more celebrities opening the show and presenting the awards. Which I miss. It somehow downgrades the exhibition that it's not worth a celebrity opening. Instead we had Maureen Lipman and her chap wandering around. Plus I gather David Linley (Princess Margaret's son) was at the reception - but I didn't see him.

Maureen Lipman - from behind

no more invites for past winners - a MAJOR change on past practice for a very long time. Every year, a few artists who had won in the past - and contributed portraits to the gallery as a commission - would come along to the Awards Evening. I know many of the artists selected for the exhibition very much appreciated meeting portrait artists with more established careers - as I did too! I was chuffed to bits when I got to meet past winner Stuart Pearson-Wright last year and we had a long chat.
the awards have got a lot smaller! It comes to something when you have to comment on how much smaller the awards are....
no more announcements in the exhibition itself - as always happened in the "old gallery" before they tried to squeeze it into the small one near the front. It's somehow much more "real" and impactful when you are actually in the exhibition for the Awards Ceremony.

What I absolutely hated

Being squeezed into the shiny tiled corridor space at the bottom of the escalator for the announcements of "who won what" is not my idea of a nice time.

Quite apart from the fact that the vast majority of the people in that space at the Awards Ceremony cannot actually see the announcements or the images. They also haven't yet seen the exhibition either, because it's up a flight of stairs, up two floors via lift or stairs and at the other end of the building! So the crowd moves en masse up the stairs - no thank you!

From the perspective of somebody trying to take photos for publication it's absolutely (expletive) diabolical.

I rather think that nobody has actually done a formal risk assessment of this current arrangement from the perspective of fire / health and safety / people with disabilities, because this disabled person finds it absolutely incomprehensible that anybody should think it was safe.

Why a sponsor would want their guests to feel like you are inside a sardine can is beyond me. It is horrible.

This year I also absolutely hated the very cheap Crudités and very ordinary supermarket type dips served up at the Award Ceremony. Most of which went untouched and the rest I found on the first floor gallery where people were not congregating. It shouted "cheap"!

Nobody should ever risk "a dip" if they have dressed up for the occasion. That's WHY you are served canapés at receptions. Pop one bite size in - and everything is fine. Pre 2020, I used to look forward to seeing what novel and tasty canapés they would serve up this year. Also much valued since I wouldn't be having my dinner until gone 10pm! This year I popped a bread stick in my bag for later when I left the Gallery!

My next posts about the Portrait Award

NEXT UP! My next posts will be

my annual "Artists with their paintings - hopefully on Sunday - lots and lots of pics of artists with their paintings hung in the exhibition
"My 10 best portrait paintings in the 2025 exhibition. This will be after a gap and another visit to the exhibition. It is very often rather different from what the Judges chose!

The Portrait Award: Why I write and what I've written

The Portrait Award has been around since 1980. It started life as the John Player Portrait Award before morphing, with a change of sponsor, into the BP Portrait Award - and is now the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award (i.e. the new sponsors are the BP lawyers).

I like calling it THE Portrait Award - sponsored by....

Its reputation has grown over time and it is now generally recognised as one of the most prestigious portrait awards in the world (if it can keep the quality entries growing!)

BP Portrait Award 2008:

Tony Hayward (Group CEO, BP) and Craig Wylie

- in front of the winning portrait 'K'

I first started attending the Awards Ceremonies back in 2008 (see above) - in the era of "the big heads".

Everybody else (Director / Sponsor / Curators / Press team) has changed since then!!
but I've been there photographing the winners EVERY YEAR it's been held except one. Which means I have a unique perspective on a unique exhibition!

Many of the portrait artists selected for the exhibition who I met last night (and have met in previous years) tell me that they'd found out about the exhibition, its background and how to do well by reading my blog posts and looking at past exhibitions in the posts BELOW.

I know - because artists have told me - that I was largely responsible for the exhibition being brought to the attention of international artists (pre 3 year closure)!

YOU can do the same.

PLUS I now see finalists in this competition before they have even entered. If I see your portrait painting in another place and recommend you apply for this competition, I recommend you actually do. There's an artist in this year's exhibition who I said that too last year.... and she will be appearing in the Artists with their Paintings post! Plus Moira Cameron told me she admired her portrait!

BELOW are all my previous blog posts going back to 2007 about this competition

This is the overarching one.

Winners of the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Award + Commissions - this goes back across all the years and identifies

the names of all the winners,
the commissioned portrait and links to its page on the NPG website.
Plus includes videos I made of interviews with award winners in recent years.

HFS Kramer Portrait Award 2025

HFS Portrait Award 2024

2021-2023

Gap while the National Portrait Gallery was closed for a major refurbishment - and a subsequent change of sponsor

BP Portrait Award 2020 (this was VIRTUAL EXHIBITION ONLY because of Covid)

BP Portrait Award 2019

BP Portrait Award 2018

BP Portrait Award 2017

BP Portrait Award 2016

Clara Drummond - Winner on 2016

BP Portrait Award 2015

BP Portrait Award 2014

BP Portrait Award 2014 - Call for Entries A review of why and how to enter the BP Portrait Award 2014 - plus how it can benefit a portrait artist's career.
Shortlist announced for BP Portrait Award 2014
BP Portrait Award: From 2,500+ entries to just three artists
BP Portrait Award 2014 - Video of presentation to prizewinners
BP Portrait Award 2014 Exhibition - review and video
A video interview with Thomas Ganter, Winner of the BP Portrait Award 2014
Richard Twose and David Jon Kassan ...
Video - what the artist saw

BP Portrait Award 2013

Susanne du Toit - Winner 2013

BP Portrait Award 2012

Aleah Chapin - Winner in 2012

Call for Entries: BP Portrait Award 2012
BP Portrait Award 2012 - 55 Selected Artists
BP Portrait Award 2012 - The Shortlist
Aleah Chapin wins £25,000 BP Portrait Award 2012
A Profile of Aleah Chapin
Carl Randall wins BP Travel Award 2012
Review: BP Portrait Award Exhibition 20 12 (Part 1) Focuses on a theory about what's important to get selected.
BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2012 (Part 2) Part 2 of a review of the BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2012. Focuses on portrait paintings I like.
Video of BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2012

MAKING A MARK

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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Portrait Award 2025 (Part 1) What's changed and what's not