Image: David Cobley, Study for the BBC, 97 x 81cm
The artist
David Cobley is one of the UK’s leading portrait painters. He was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award in 1989, then elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1997.
He has painted portraits of Ken Dodd (now in the National Portrait Gallery), The Princess Royal, as well as leading academics, actors, scientists, politicians, writers, members of the armed forces and business leaders.
This commission to paint the portrait of Sir David Attenborough was one of the highlights of his distinguished career.
David Cobley
If I never painted another portrait again…
David Cobley
I would be happy’, says David Cobley. ‘I can’t think of anyone else I’d like to have painted more. What Sir David has done is to remind all of us of the extraordinary world we live in. Just as artists try and show things from a different point of view, David has shown us life from a plant’s perspective, from the eye of an ant, or from that of a polar bear on a drifting ice floe.
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