Review: Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2017

The 2017 Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters struck me as being very different this year.
To me, it seemed as if:

• there are fewer portraits of celebrities - or maybe the "famous people" are just more low key (apart from Melvyn Bragg!)?
• the commissioned portraits of the corporate and academic souls somehow seem less evident - which is a good thing. I know the commissions are the meat and drink of a portrait artist's life but they have made for a pretty dull main gallery in the past. 
• the hang is better this year. There's a better mix of portraits in the main gallery and interesting work in all three galleries
• this year the exhibition also seems to have caught up with current times as it reflects diversity in terms of ethnicity and gender much better than ever before
• a model called Barrie is in four different portraits. If you visit the exhibition why not see if you can spot them all?

The exhibition is being held in the Main Gallery, North Galleries and Threadneedle Space of the Mall Galleries between 4th May and 17th May 2017.

Entrance to the Mall Galleries and the Annual Exhibition
of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters

This is the third exhibition for Robin Lee-Hall as President and she retires at the end of the month. A new President will be elected at the AGM after the exhibition.

End Wall in the Main Gallery - portraits by members of the Society

Threadneedle Space

The small portraits wall in the Main Gallery - spot Julie Walters and Jo Brand

Exhibition metrics - and the Open Entry

Below is some data which hopefully puts the open entries selected for exhibition into context and provides some useful background for those hoping to enter future exhibitions.

Prizewinners at the 126th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters

This is a post about the people who were given awards at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters on Wednesday at its very well attended Private View at the Mall Galleries. 

Tomorrow I'll write a review of the exhibition.

It was lovely to speak to so many of the members and those aspiring to be members who got portraits selected for the exhibition.

The exhibition opened yesterday and continues until 19th May (10am-5pm). It's open until 7pm on the 9th and 16th May. Admission is £4 and £2.50 concession plus 50% off to National Art Pass Holders. Free to Friends of Mall Galleries and under 18s

There is a list of artist demonstrations at the end of this post. Most of them cost nothing.

RSPP 2017 Prizewinners

Congratulations to the RSPP and the support staff at the Mall Galleries for having the complete list of prizewinners available when I walked through the door and having posted them on Facebook before I even got to the exhibition!

Hopefully this post enhances that communication by discussing aspects of portrait or artist or both.

The Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture 

Prize: £10,000 + Gold Medal

Winner: Shawn McGovern for James

Winner of the Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture
James by Shawn McGovern
oil, 83cm x 60cm £5,500

Background:

• awarded annually for the most distinguished portrait of the year
• launched in 1995
• sponsored by Sir Christopher Ondaatje CBE OC and the Ondaatje Foundation
• see past winners

Shawn has a First Class degree (BA Fine Art Painting) from Wimbledon College of Art and he also did the Postgraduate Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School.

The painting is of his girlfriend's brother.

New BBC Series - An Art Lovers Guide to three cities

"An Art Lovers Guide" is a new three part series on BBC Four about discovering a city through key aspects of its art and design.

An Art Lovers Guide - a new short BBC4 series

I watched the first programme on Amsterdam. It's definitely worth watching - particularly if you enjoy art history and/or you've not been to the cities covered but hope to do in future.

The two presenters Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke are both well qualified for the task of providing a guide. They're personable as well as academically credible, have both presented television series on art for the BBC before and, most importantly, they can both string words together on the hoof and make an intelligent comment.

Their pairing also gives us the benefit of one individual (Janina) who is enthusiastic about the past and another (Alastair) who is a fan of modern and contemporary art. Good choice! I think this might be a series which could run and run.

The cities being covered are detailed below with their BBC "blurb"

• Links in the title are to the detailed pages by BBC Media identifying what they cover. 
• The link to the iPlayer version of the programme is below the first one.

Amsterdam: An Art Lovers' Guide

With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of cultural highlights. So what should an art lover see on a flying visit?

This is the link to the programme on BBC iPlayer

Barcelona: An Art Lovers' Guide

In this second episode of An Art Lovers’ Guide, Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke are on a mission to get to know one of the most popular cities in the world through its art and architecture - Barcelona.

St Petersburg: An Art Lovers' Guide

In the final episode, Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke explore St Petersburg through its dazzling art and architecture.

See Ed Sheeran in the National Portrait Gallery tomorrow

Tomorrow morning you can walk into the National Portrait Gallery and see Ed Sheeran with a big head.

NPG 7035: Edward Christopher (Ed) Sheeran (b.1991-)
by Colin Davidson (b.1968-)
Oil on linen, 2016 1270 mm x 1170 mm (50 in. x 46 in.)
© Colin Davidson

Or rather a rather large oil painting of his head.

It's the first portrait painting of Sheeran by a professional artist since he began his career as a musician.

The painting is by Colin Davidson who likes painting larger than life size paintings.  This particular painting is some around about four feet square - so that's a pretty "big head" (and there was me thinking we'd come to the end of the era of "big heads"!)

You can find it in Room 39, Ground Floor Lerner Contemporary Galleries, National Portrait Gallery, London, from 3 May 2017 (Admission free).

It appears that the proposal to paint a portrait followed a meeting between the artist and the singer's father John Sheeran (who, as it happens, is the former Curator of Dulwich Picture Gallery)

Ed then agreed to sit and the main sitting for the portrait was in August 2015. It's based on twenty drawings from life and reference photographs.

Davidson studied Sheeran intently for up to three hours which apparently Sheeran found fascinating, as the whole process contrasted to his fast-paced lifestyle.

‘When painting a portrait I am looking for the moment when the person is almost unaware of me being there and I feel I got it with Ed. I deliberately didn’t want Ed to perform and that was odd for him. But there is a youthful aspect to the portrait but also something experienced beyond his years.’ Colin Davidson

His larger-than-life paintings are explained as follows

‘They are all deliberately the same size; the idea is that everyone I paint is an equal and that format allows the face to become something else. If you see a painting of a face that is life-size, it never becomes anything else, it is a head. If it is smaller or bigger it can become something else’. Colin Davidson

Notable recent portraits he'd done include:

• The Queen - commissioned by Co-Operation Ireland, of which the monarch is a joint patron - and unveiled by the Queen
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the cover of Time Magazine's Person of the Year edition in 2015 

Davidson is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, the Ulster Museum in Belfast and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Facts about the sitter and the artist

Ed Sheeran

• singer-songwriter, actor, guitarist and record producer 
• one of the most successful musicians in contemporary British popular culture. 
• His 2011 debut album, + (‘Plus’), reached platinum status six-times in the UK. 
• The album featured the hit single “The A Team”, which received the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically and was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards. S
• Sheeran’s second album x (‘Multiply’) released in 2014, 
• achieved number one in both the UK and US charts 
• became the most-streamed album in the world for 2014. 
• won British Album of the Year at the 2015 Brit Awards and his single ‘Thinking Out Loud’ earned him two Grammy Awards at the 2016 ceremony. 
• The British singer-songwriter's third album ÷ (Divide), released in March 2017, 
• debuted at No 1 on the Official UK Album Charts 
• achieved 672,000 sales in its opening week 
• made history as the fastest-selling album by a male artist.

I think that certainly justifies his "person of note" status meriting a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. (i.e. additions to the Collection of the National portrait Gallery need to meet the criteria of those who have made an important contribution to British history and culture).

Well spotted Colin Davison for recognising an opportunity was there for the creating!

Colin Davidson

• leading portrait artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Art and Design degree (First Class Hons) from the University of Ulster, Belfast (1987-91) 
• Honorary Degree for Art in 2016 from Queen’s University, Belfast. 
• He has participated in the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award three times in 2011-2013, winning the BP Portrait Award Visitor’s Choice Award in 2012 (see below - which I found in my folder for BP2012!)

The Dialects of Silence (Portrait of Michael Longley)
by Colin Davidson, 2012

• Davidson’s recent portrait series, Silent Testimony, exhibited in 2015 at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, depicted eighteen individuals linked by privately endured experiences of loss that transformed their lives during the Troubles years in Northern Ireland. Seamus Heaney, Brad Pitt, Sir Kenneth Branagh and The Queen are among his many portrait subjects.
• website http://www.colindavidson.com/
• Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/colindavidsonart/

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth - an exhibition at the Bodleian

Next year Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth will be on display in the Weston Library of The Bodleian Libraries in Oxford between 1 June-28 October 2018.

This exhibition will explore the full breadth of Tolkien’s unique literary imagination from his creation of Middle-earth, the imagined world where The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and his other works are set, to his life and work as an artist, poet, medievalist and scholar of languages.

The exhibition focuses on the creative genius of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

It's an exhibition which is guaranteed to delight visitors of all ages as well as Tolkien fans and scholars.  It's also the first time, since the 1950s, that literary and visual materials produced by Tolkein - now held in the UK and the USA - will be on display in Oxford.

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth will feature:

• manuscripts, 
• artwork, 
• maps, 
• letters and 
• artefacts from the Bodleian’s foremost Tolkien Archive, the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University in the USA and from private collections.

Below are some of the images from The Hobbit (published on 21 September 1937) which will be in the exhibition.

Below is the final design of the dust jacket which many of us will be very familiar with. It's certainly one of the books I remember best reading as a child over 50 years ago. It's also a book which has never been out of print.

Hobbit Dust Jacket
Credit: © The Tolkien Estate Limited 1937

Tolkien not only illustrated The Hobbit but was also closely involved in its production process. He designed both the dust-jacket and the binding. Tolkien’s notes can be seen around the outside of the image.

Apparently he was very keen to use four colours for the printing of the dust cover: green, blue, black and red but this was too expensive. The note scrawled by the publisher across the  left hand margin says ‘Ignore red’.

Bilbo comes to the huts of the Raft-elves
© The Tolkien Estate Limited 1937
Bilbo is seen sitting astride a barrel floating down the forest river,
having helped the dwarves (who are hidden inside the wine barrels)
to escape from the dungeons of the Elven King.

This was Tolkien’s favourite watercolour. It's a watercolour which would be regarded as an accomplished illustration from a professional illustrator. Instead it was painted by Tolkein himself who was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford at the time!

This illustration appeared in the first edition and continued to be included in numerous other editions of the book. However, Tolkien was very disappointed to find that it had been omitted from the first American edition.