Author Description

This beautifully produced compendium features 500 paintings from many of the best<br/>figurative artists active over the last twenty-one years. Reflecting the diverse methods of<br/>contemporary portrait practice, the book includes a dazzling array of styles, from<br/>immaculate photorealism to intense expressionism.<br/><br/>The BP Portrait Award is one of Britain’s most prestigious art prizes, and each year<br/>nearly 300,000 people visit the exhibition based on the competition. It has acted as a<br/>springboard for many painters’ careers, notably the prize-winners who have been<br/>subsequently commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint an eminent sitter.<br/>This book includes full-colour reproductions of many of those commissions – including<br/>paintings of Dame Helen Mirren, J.K. Rowling, Sir Michael Caine, Fiona Shaw, Sir Ian<br/>McKellen, Sir Paul Smith and Dame Cicely Saunders.<br/><br/>As well as these high-profile commissions, the book features an inspiring wealth of<br/>subjects: unflinching self-portraits, warm portrayals of children and babies,<br/>conversation pieces, studies of people at home and at work – a rich and varied<br/>selection of hundreds of faces by some of the finest portrait painters of our time.