Congratulations to Florence Yuqing for winning The Raw Umber Studios Prize: Raw Umber Studios believes that the most exciting contemporary portraiture lies at the intersection of technical excellence and creative expression. Their annual prize, inaugurated in 2023, encourages and rewards such work. Value £2,000. Can you tell us more about your exhibiting (award winning?)…
Congratulations to RP Toby Wiggins for winning this year’s RP Prize for best Small Portrait with ‘Ezra Aged Six and Three Quarters’. A prize of £2,000 for the best small portrait in the exhibition, measuring not more than 38 x 30.5 cm (15 x 12 inches) unframed. How did this portrait start? I had…
This year, International Face Equality Week and Mental Health Awareness Week coincide. Both events hold themes that are incredibly relevant for both the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Federation of British Artists. This year’s theme for Mental Health Awareness week is community, to celebrate the power and importance of having a safe and…
JOHN SINGER SARGENT 1856 – 2025 John Singer Sargent was made an Honorary Member of The Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1903. The Society is delighted to be able to celebrate its distinguished former member in this, his centenary year. The Sargent scholar, Richard Ormond, has very generously loaned Sargent’s painting of ‘Conrad…
FRANCESS BELL RP: MY TEACHER “My teacher, Charles Cecil is a classicist to his core. He was trained in Boston by R.H Ives Gammel and came over to Europe, and finally Florence as a young man in the manner, I always imagined, of a 19th century fictional character seeking his fortune. He settled…
Maurice de Sausmarez, ‘Self Portrait’ SUSAN RYDER RP: MY TEACHER My art has been influenced by many teachers, who I might prefer to call Masters, but the one who taught me the most was Maurice De Sausmarez. He became Principal of the Byam Shaw in 1962, just a year after I had started…
JOSHUA WATERHOUSE RP: MY TEACHER “At school I was taught by a man called John McGowan. John was and still is an wonderful printmaker, principally a screen printer. John taught me from the age of 13-16. He encouraged me to chart my own course as a young artist. Perhaps a little fixed in…
RP Toby Wiggins’ portrait of ‘Mary Spencer Watson’ (1913 – 2006) has recently been hung in Dunshay Manor in Dorset, UK. “It was made in her studio (in 2003) alongside the house and was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery (courtesy of the BP Portait Award), London in 2004. Mary made the journey…
John Wonnacott RP, ‘James Fairfax Stamford Mill’, 2006 JOHN WONNACOTT RP: THREE BOOK FEATURES The first (above) is a book by Alexander Edward Gilly (2024) titled; ‘James Fairfax Portrait of a Collector in Eleven Objects’. The book on the late James Fairfax AO has John’s portrait of him both on the cover and…
Kenny McKendry, ‘In a Ditchling Garden-John Vernon Lord’ KENNY MCKENDRY RP: MY TEACHER Blinking into the light of my first real encounter of a genuine artistic genius stepped John Vernon Lord in the distant foothills of 1983. Arriving at what was then Brighton Polytechnic, later to become The University of Brighton, I had…