BP Portrait Award 2009
~ Sarah Dunant (Author) – Paperback: 80 pages National Portrait Gallery Publications
(June 18, 2009)
The BP Portrait Award, now in its nineteenth year, is a popular fixture on the summer
calendar, and is the leading showcase for artists specializing in portraiture. The
competition is open to all artists aged eighteen and over from around the world.
The 2008 award received 1,600 entrants, all competing for the main prize of GBP
25,000 and a possible commission.
BP Portrait Award 2007
~ Scottish National Portrait Gallery – Paperback: 88 pages
National Portrait Gallery (January 2007)
The catalogue features over sixty works from an international list of artists, which
together display a diverse range of styles and painterly techniques, highlighting
the vitality of portrait painting today. It also includes a witty and illuminating
essay by popular writer and journalist Lynne Truss and an illustrated article by
Toby Wiggins, the travel-award winner 2006. Toby Wiggins portrays the people who
work the land in Dorset. His portraits show his respect and admiration for their
skill and knowledge and his deep commitment to rural life, which is under threat.
BP Portrait Award 2006 – Hardcover: 80 pages National Portrait Gallery
(January 2006)
As well as featuring all the entries from this year's competition, this arresting
book includes a fascinating essay by novelist and biographer Margaret Forster and
an illustrated article by Joel Ely, the travel-award winner 2005. Ely has made portraits
of members of a Basque male gastronomic society known as the Txoko, which meets
weekly to consume traditional Basque dishes, drink, talk and sometimes sing. He
explores how cooking is a means of communication and a way of defining cultural
identity and authenticity.
Margaret Forster's essay focuses on how portraits have inspired her biographical
writing, and shows how woman have been portrayed in portraiture over the centuries,
culminating in a celebration of women's achievements.
 BP
Portrait Award 2005 by Philip Hensher (Introduction) – Paperback: 80
pages National Portrait Gallery (September 30, 2005)
Note: Amazon shows a different cover than this, but this is the one shown on
the National Portrait Gallery web site. We are not responsible for which cover
you may receive.
As well as featuring all the entries from this year's competition, this arresting
book includes a fascinating essay by Philip Hensher and portraits of people in the
old Persian bazaar in Tehran by Darvish Fakhr, the BP travel-award winner 2004.
Fakhr's paintings show the depths of emotion behind outwardly ritualised lives and
aim to help us understand the common humanity that links the Western world and the
Middle East. |
 
BP Portrait Award 2004 by Blake Morrison – Paperback: 80 pages National
Portrait Gallery (January 25, 2007)
Note: Amazon shows a different cover than this, but this is the one shown on
the National Portrait Gallery web site. We are not responsible for which cover you
may receive.
As well as featuring all the entries from this year's competition, this arresting
book includes a fascinating essay by Blake Morrison and powerful portraits by Ulyana
Gumeniuk, winner of last year's BP Travel Award . Ulyana's portraits are accompanied
by illuminating extracts from her interviews with the sitters.
The highly acclaimed writer Blake Morrison looks at the potency of portraiture
and how a good portrait painting does not merely capture a likeness, but connects
with the inner energy of the sitter, showing the 'flickers of feeling, shadows
of thought, or what Leonardo da Vinci called "the motions of the mind"'.
BP Portrait Award 2003 by A. S. Byatt – Paperback: 80 pages National
Portrait Gallery (November 2003)
Note: Amazon shows a different cover than this, but this is the one shown on
the National Portrait Gallery web site. We are not responsible for which cover
you may receive.
 
The BP Portrait Award 2002 by Richard E. Grant (Foreword), Susie Foster
(Editor), William Packer (Introduction) – Paperback: 80 pages National Portrait
Gallery (July 2002)
Attitudes to portraiture have changed dramatically since the Award's inception
in 1980. It is now one of Britain's most popular annual exhibitions, each year
bringing to the fore new and sometimes undiscovered talent. When Justin Mortimer
won the award in 1991, he was propelled into a series of high-profile commissions
including HM The Queen, and said that 'Winning the BP Portrait Award was an extraordinary
thing: that year I was still an art student and happily ignorant of how to get
an artistic career. The prize was the catalyst.'
William Packer's lucid essay presents an overview of the Award and explores the
growing interest in British portrait painters, setting their work within the historical
context of portraiture in general and celebrating the continuing success of this
prestigious event.
  BP
Portrait Award 1990-2001 by Martin Gayford – Paperback National Portrait
Gallery (October 2001)
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