Video and review of BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2016

The 2016 Exhibition for the BP Portrait Award is very different from previous years. 

That's not a surprise given that threre's been a change in the Director of the National Portrait Gallery and this year Jenny Saville was asked to be a member of the Selection Panel. The Director of the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland was also involved with the selection this year.

Video of the BP Portrait Exhibition 2016

For those familiar with the exhibition you can see the changes for yourself in my video of the exhibition below (which you can also see on youTube).  As usual the 'bumpy' view is due to me literally walking with my iPhone6+ around the gallery.

Apologies for the lack of audio - there's normally background "hum" but in this instance there was music playing and I don't have the copyright permission - hence it's now a very quiet video!

If you're unable to visit the exhibition, my video is particularly relevant to:

• getting a much better understanding of the relative size of the individual paintings
• appreciating more about the choice of subject, size, style, palette and approach to painting a portrait for this exhibition.

You can find out more about the individual artists:

• on the NPG website - see exhibitors. Click the individual images to see a bigger image and read about the painting and the artist
• in my blog post BP Portrait Award 2016: Selected Artists - which lists those selected by country and also includes links to their websites (where one can be found).

What's different in the 2016 Exhibition

The main changes I noticed are as follows:

• there are many more smaller portraits.  This is possibly a reflection of the cost of shipping original works - but I think is more likely to have been a deliberate choice by selectors.  I think it's maybe partly a rejection of the notion that you have to "go big to impress" - which is no bad thing. (I'm going to do a count of the sizes of the portraits - and will add this in to this post. I ran out of time today having had complications with making the video and the video upload. I do however now know where a video which has been made but crashes before it is shared goes on my iMac!)
• the photorealistic style has taken a back seat. A number of those painting realistic paintings are in fact painting from life.
• there are an awful lot of portraits cropped to head and shoulders / head and upper torso (ie minus hands) 
• there are absolutely no big heads of the type which were very prevalent in recent years

This view inclues the largest head in the exhibition

• there is a lot of realism but it's of a much more painterly variety
• I got a very strong impression than most of the subjects are identified very clearly as close friends and family:
• children eg. 
• Pearl in the morning, ready for school by Samantha Fellows
• Francesca by Daniele Vezzani. This striking painting was chosen for the cover of the catalogue
• A Portrait of my Son by Miseon Lee
• Jean by Jean-Paul Tibbles
• Stanley on a Painter's Rag by Keith Robinson
• Alice and the Planets by Lewis Chamberlain
• Die Vermutung I by Wolfgang Kessler
• Tad (Son Of The Artist) by John Borowicz

• spouses and partners eg 
• Oana by Boris Dobre
• Laura In Black by Joshua LaRock
• brother and sisters and in laws eg 
• Carol by Richard Burger
• James Rhodes by Alexander Chamberlin
• parents eg LMF03 by France Borden
• grandparents eg Bo Wang's grandmother in Silence
• close friends eg 
• Falk by David von Bassewitz 
• Vacuum 2 by Thomas Ehretsmann
• Petras by Laura Guoke

It seemed to me that the paintings selected this year in general have stuck much more closely to the brief. They represent portraits by people who have had plenty of opportunity to work from life with their subject.

• a number of portraits are self-portraits 
• both large - eg Self Portrait In Pembroke Studios by Eileen Hogan
• and small - eg Self by Shany van den Berg
• there are a number of portraits of fellow artists eg
• The Enigma of Jasper Rose by Saied Dai
• there are a few professional models. An example is: Portrait In The Mirror: The Veil
  by Antonio Laglia
• there are very few "famous people". Those selected are typically commission and not the conventional 'crowd pullers' i.e. 
• Sir Andrew Motion (who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009) - painted by Fiona Graham-McKay (see Artists with their paintings)
• Hugo Williams - the British poet, journalist and travel writer - painted by Benjamin Sullivan (see my video interview with him later this week)
• Harriet Harman MP - painted by Charles Moxon
• Laurie Weedon, D-Day Glider Pilot by Martin Yeoman
• It's also very clear that the subjects of these commissioned portraits subjects also sat formally for the paintings - much as the representatives of 'the great and the good' do when sitting for portraits commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery.
• there are also some commissions of 'ordinary people'. For example:
• The Weaver by Joshua Waterhouse
• The 271 to Arsenal (Xavier & Max) by Teri Anne Scoble

One exception is Diversion by Charlie Masson - which does NOT conform to the brief for the paintings i.e.

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

I also noticed that, by and large, only well established portrait artists are painting people of note.

I must confess I'm very much in favour of this approach to selection. To my mind everybody selected for the exhibition should in theory be capable of accepting a commission from the National Portrait Gallery to paint a famous person. To do that they must be capable of making studies of and painting from life.

I pondered on the influence Jenny Saville brought to bear on the exhibition. She told me at the Awards Ceremony that she pushed hard for more painterly paintings.  It's certainly the case that are more painterly portraits and much less hyper-realism than I've seen in the past.

I'm going to do a count of the sizes of the portraits - and also count the different types of portraits (eg head only; head and torso; head and hands etc) and will add this in to this post. I ran out of time today having had complications with making the video and the video upload. I do however now know where a video which has been made but crashes before it is shared goes on my iMac!

I wonder what would happen next year if it was a requirement that every portrait had to include hands as well as a head?

More about the BP Portrait Award 2016

These are my blog posts

• Clara Drummond wins £30000 BP Portrait Award 2016 - Making a Mark
• BP Portrait Award 2016 - Artists with their paintings
• My "Best of the Rest" from BP Portrait Award Entries
• BP Portrait Award 2016: Selected Artists
• Comparison of the RSPP Open and BP Portrait Award Competition
• £30,000 BP Portrait Award 2016 - How to enter and how to get selected

Want to study Art at a UK University?

If you want to study art at a UK University, you might like to take a look at the Guardian Rankings of the different Universities offering degree courses for both Art and the History of Art.

The Guardian has published a University Guide. This includes the University League Tables for 2017. There is a key to the meaning behind the headings which is it important to read before consulting the actual tables for the subject you are interested in - I've quoted them below

Key to the table headings
1. The Guardian ranking of the university
2. Name of university
3. The Guardian score out of 100 is a rating of excellence based on a combination of all the other factors
4. Course satisfaction is the percentage of final-year students satisfied with overall quality, based on the National Student Survey (NSS)
5. The teaching quality score is the percentage of final-year students satisfied with the teaching they received, based on the NSS
6. The feedback score is the percentage of final-years satisfied with feedback and assessment by lecturers, based on the NSS
7. Staff-student ratio is the number of students per member of teaching staff
8. Spend is the amount of money spent on each student, given as a rating out of 10
9. Average entry tariff means the typical Ucas scores of students currently studying in that department
10. The value-added score compares students’ individual degree results with their entry qualifications, to show how effective the teaching is. It is given as a rating out of 10
11. The career score is the percentage of graduates who find graduate-level jobs, or are studying further, within six months of graduation. It’s our way of ranking employability

If so minded you can actually download all the tables in full!

Rankings of UK Universities offering Art

The top five universities - which I found a little surprising - are:

Slade School of Art Facebook Page

• University College London (Slade School of Fine Art) - top in part because highly rated by the Guardian as a university. Very high satisfaction with course and value added scores
• Oxford University (Ruskin School of Art) - highest entry hurdles and best student to staff ratio - but students are more critical about the quality of feedback and assessment
• Newcastle University - Middling spend per student but high satisfaction scores
• Oxford Brookes University - Spend per student is very high relative to others
• Goldsmiths (University of London) - High value added and just under half the graduates have a job after six months of graduation

The bottom five universities are (in reverse order - worst first) are:

• South Wales 
• Canterbury Christ Church
• East London
• Salford
• Leeds Beckett

These are all what I would call 'late comers' to the university title.  Universally they ALL have:

• very low spend per student
• low to lowish entry tariffs
• high to very high student to staff ratios
• very low assessments of the calibre of the host university by the Guardian

Booking is now open for the Slade Summer School and Foundation courses 2016.

See also Brexit #1: What does it mean for UK and EU Art Students and Schools?

Sketches from The Battle of The Somme

Today is the 100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme in which over a million people from 50 countries died in five months during the First World War.

On the First Day of the Somme:

• the British Fourth Army had 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 men were killed. 
• The French had 1,590 casualties and 
• the German 2nd Army lost 10,000–12,000 men.

This is about the way the battle was recorded at the time by those who drew - officially and otherwise - and the conditions that they found while they were there.

With the French and British armies calling upon troops from the colonies and the French Foreign Legion, units from 25 nations and 50 countries were involved in the Battle of the Somme. In five months of combat, the total number of men killed, wounded and missing reached over one million and entire nations were sent into mourning. Casualties amounted to 420,000 for the British, 190,000 for the French and 420,000 for the Germans. The landscape of the north-east of the Somme was completely devastated; villages were razed to the ground and fields were turned into lunar-landscapes by shelling. http://www.somme-battlefields.com/

Drawings of the Somme Battle and its aftermath

Those who drew varied. Some were or became famous. Others are little known. I'm guessing there are probably a fair few sketchbooks which never made it into official archives.

Those drawing the Somme include:

• Muirhead Bone (1876-1953)- the first official war artist. He became an active member of the War Artists' Advisory Committee in the Second World War. Bone was a draughtsman and etcher who had studied art in the evenings at the Glasgow School of Art and was a member of the New English Art Club.
• E H Shepard (1879-1976) - who subsequently provided illustrations for Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows
• George Hoffman Spencer - an architect and artist whose estate bequeathed his sketchbook to the Imperial War Museum. It contains some 150 drawings. 
• Captain Robert Mauchlen (1885-1972) drew a series of sketches during the war, including several during the Battle of the Somme.
• J.B Morrall - A sketchbook of Morrall's drawings was sent in by Mrs Morrall (unclear whether this is the artist's wife or mother), and the Imperial War Museum purchased five of them

The war artist Lieutenant Muirhead Bone crossing a muddy road, Maricourt, September 1916
Imperial War Museum Collections |© IWM (Q 1464)

Commissioned as an honorary second lieutenant, Bone served as a war artist with the Allied forces on the Western Front and also with the Royal Navy for a time. He arrived in France on 16 August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme and produced 150 drawings of the war before returning to England in October 1916. Wikipedia

George Spencer Hoffman drew the soldiers who were exhausted or wounded and killed in the battle.

Vignettes of soldiers on the Somme July 2016
First World War Sketchbook Volume 1 - Salvage, Somme, July 1916
George Spencer Hoffman (1875-1950)
Imperial War Museum Archive

EH Shepherd MC OBE (1879-1976) sketched his dugout in watercolour and the combat area around where he served.

Though in his mid-thirties when World War I broke out in 1914, Shepard received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery, an arm of the Royal Artillery. By 1916, Shepard started working for the Intelligence Department sketching the combat area within the view of his battery position. On 16 February 1917, he was made an acting captain whilst second-in-command of a siege battery, and briefly served as an acting major in late April and early May of that year, when he reverted to the acting rank of captain. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 July 1917. Whilst acting as Captain, he was awarded the Military Cross for his service at the Battle of Passchendaele. Wikipedia

Our BC post copse B, near Maricourt Somme August 1916 E H Shepard Lieut.
pencil and watercolour wash, 257mm c 180mm
Imperial War Museum | Gift of Mrs E H Shepard, 1976

You can see more of EH Shepard's watercolour sketches from the First World War on the Imperial War Museum's website.

“Shepard went out to the Somme in June or July, and his brother, who he was close to, followed a couple of days later,” says curator Olivia Ahmad. “But he was killed almost instantly. When Shepard found out, he went to find his grave. He took a map with him and drew a tiny cross marking the co-ordinates where his brother was buried. All of the other maps he had were working documents, so they’re a bit tatty, but this one is pristine, with just this one tiny notation,” she adds.E.H. Shepard: An Illustrator’s War | Creative Review

Some were adept at sketching soldiers in  action. This is a very impressive sketch by Captain Robert Mauchlen MC (1885-1972)

Sketch of the attack on the Butte de Warlencourt on 5 November 1916
by Captain Robert Mauchlen MC (1885-1972)
Sketchbook in the Battle of the Somme archives of Durham County Record Office

The Butte de Warlencourt is an ancient burial mound off the Albert–Bapaume road, north-east of Le Sars in the Somme département of northern France. .....The Germans constructed deep dugouts throughout the Butte and surrounded it by several belts of barbed wire, making it a formidable defensive position in advance of Gallwitz Riegel (the Gird Trenches). After the Battle of Flers–Courcelette (15–22 September) the view from the Butte dominated the new British front line and was used by the Germans for artillery observation. During the Battle of Le Transloy (1–20 October), part of the Battle of the Somme, the Butte de Warlencourt was the subject of several attacks by the British Fourth Army, which were costly failures; attacks in November also failed. Wikipedia

The artillery shelling reduced everything to nothing. This is an article about How War Artist Muirhead Bone Recorded The Battle of The Somme

An Artillery Barrage on the Somme Battlefield:
Mametz Wood, Contalmaison Château, Fricourt Wood and Delville Wood in the distance.
Drawn from King's Hill, Fricourt, September, 1916
Muirhead Bone
pencil and wash 330mm x 501mm
Imperial War Museum Collection | Art.IWM ART 2098

Villages, trees and people were all obliterated - and the artists continued to sketch and record.

Contalmaison was a village which was a target on the very first day - on 1st July 2016

Contalmaison can be found about three miles north-east of Albert and around half a mile south of Pozieres, on the southern side of the main D929 road. The village was an objective for the 34th Division on the 1st of July 1916, but it took many more days of hard fighting before the 8th and 9th Green Howards of the 23rd Division were able to take it at 4.30 p.m. on the 10th of July.
World War One Battlefields

Contalmaison in 1916 : the remains of the village
J. B. Morrall

watercolour on paper, 203 mm  x 304mm
Imperial War Museum Collection | © IWM (Art.IWM ART 205)

a view across the devastated village of Contalmaison, which has been reduced to piles of rubble and tree stumps, with only a single recognisable building visible.
(IWM)

'The abomination of desolation'

Mametz Wood: after the autumn advance, 1916. 

J. B. Morrall

watercolour on paper, 228 mm  x 286 mm

Imperial War Museum Collection | © IWM (Art.IWM ART 202)

a view across the devastated Mametz Wood, with splintered tree stumps and flooded shell holes. The body of a dead German infantryman lies in the foreground, the legs visible but the torso and head hidden by the water of a flooded shell hole. 
(IWM)

Then the wounded were brought home - first embarking on the ships. This is a lithograph by Muirhead Bone of the embarkation of the wounded which would have been based on sketchbook studies at the time. Muirhead Bone created a portfolio of 60 prints at the end of the war based on studies made while working as a war artist.

War Drawings By Muirhead Bone: Taking the Wounded
lithograph on paper; 505mm x 378mm

Then they return home via London.

This is the view I have of Charing Cross Station every time I return home from a visit to the National Gallery or National Portrait Gallery. It's therefore especially poignant to realise the function the station also played in bringing home the wounded from the Battle of the Somme. (The painting below was painted the year after the war finished.)

A view of the exterior of Charing Cross railway station. The Strand is lined with crowds of civilians watching Red Cross ambulances leaving the station.

Outside Charing Cross Station, July 1916.
Casualties from the Battle of the Somme arriving in London
J Hobson Lobley 1919
oil on vanvas, 2057mm x 3073mm
Imperial War Museum Collection
© IWM (Art.IWM ART 2759)

There's something very special about recording an event which you witnessed.

There's also something very special about maintaining an archive - and then sharing it and allowing others to share so that others can see what went before....

See also

• my earlier blog post about the 2013 exhibition 'Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War' at Somerset House
• the British Library article Why paint war? British and Belgian artists in World War One -Article by: Paul Gough

Wildlife Artist of the Year - The Exhibition

Yesterday I wrote about the people who won the awards at the Wildlife Artist of the Year Exhibition - at the Mall Galleries until 4pm on Saturday.  (see Wildlife Artist of the Year 2016 - The Awards).

Today it's the turn of the people whose artwork caught my eye.

Plus I have a video of the exhibition - which you can see below and on my Making A Mark Channel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/makingamark2)

So whose work caught my eye - apart from the award winners?

The exhibition starts strong - these are the first pieces you see as you enter. (I'm going to add in credits - but am rushing off out to an exhibition this morning so will do it later today)

Wildlife Artist of the Year 2016 Exhibition - entrance to the Main Gallery

The exhibition for the competition is split in two - one side (the Main Gallery) has all the colour - and it is very colourful......

A really colourful wall below the bookshop

.....and the Threadneedle Space has the monochrome pieces. 

I thought that visually it worked extremely well.

Wildlife Artist of the Year 2016 - The Awards

The Wildlife Artist of the Year 2016 Exhibition opened today at the Mall Galleries. I was there last night for the preview and to see the awards being made. Below you can find out who became Artist of the year and also see the which artwork won in each category.

Artwork in the exhibition

It's an excellent exhibition with many outstanding works of art. For all lovers of wildlife art it's definitely an exhibition to visit. 

50% of the sales of all works of art also goes to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation's wildlife conservation projects across Africa and Asia. This is the ninth show and to date it has raised over £320,000 to help protect endangered wildlife.

I've got a video and would also like to highlight some of the other works in the show so I'll post again later this week.

The exhibition is open 10am to 5pm (and 4pm on the last day - which is Saturday 2nd July.

A view of the exhibition in the main gallery

If you can't get to the exhibition you can still view images of the artwork in the exhibition online.

Wildlife Artist of the Year

Wildlife Artist of the Year 2016  (£10,000)

Sponsored by Mr & Mrs Covey

WILDLIFE ARTIST OF THE YEAR (2016)
Ribbon Eel by Umberto (Cher, France)
Bronze

Wonderfully sensuous with the great weight of the bronze contrasting with the lightness of form – its beautifully smooth texture creates a very modern and original evocation of wildlife art.

Umberto is an award-winning sculptor. He started out as a model maker for commercial art. However once he started working using a foundry for his work, it became more figurative and about nature and wildlife. He now has a workshop where he has worked as a professional sculptor for the last 13 years.

Umberto with David Shepherd at the Awards Ceremony

Runner up 

£1,000 and an artist residency for a week at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire.
Sponsored by Simon Trapnell 

Runner Up: Fading Giant by Stefano Zagaglia (Milan, Italy)

It is the essence of everything that DSWF works to protect in painted form. No words are required as visually it says something grand is disintegrating in front of our eyes – the white space is all that we will be left with.

Stefano was also selected for the Wildlife Artist of the Year exhibition in 2015.

Category winners:

The Category winners each receive £500 and a Certificate

Animal Behaviour 

- a real understanding of animal behaviour and a sense of character.

Category Winner: Game Face On by Warren Cary ( Hoedspruit , South Africa)

A beautiful, strong interpretation of an iconic and powerful species left in the wild today. It’s refreshing to see an individual style of precision, power and eloquence.

 The Threadneedle Space houses all the work which is monochrome and is where this work is situated.

Earth’s Beautiful Creatures 

– the judges were looking for not only beautifully executed original artworks but also imaginative interpretation, moving away from the purely photographic to compositions with great characterisation , showing imagination, originality and genuine creativity.
Sponsored by Gary Hodges

Category Winner: Maribou Portrait by Alan Woollett ( Maidstone , Kent)
(coloured pencil on Fabriano Artistico) 

Not one of nature’s beauties but this strong head depicts the warts and all and contrasts with the softness of the pelage (body feathers)

Not the prettiest bird in the room - but very striking and caught my eye from the other side of the room.

Alan at the Awards Ceremony - he had no idea he's won his category!

Hidden World 

- the judges wanted to see a celebration of remote and rarely observed or lesser known landscapes and species
presented in memory of Derek Francis