Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.
Olympia is a painting by Édouard Manet, first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon, which shows a nude woman ("Olympia") lying on a bed being brought flowers by a servant. Olympia was modelled by Victorine Meurent and Olympia's servant by the art model Laure. Olympia's confrontational gaze caused shock and astonishment when the painting was first exhibited because a number of details in the picture identified her as a prostitute. The French government acquired the painting in 1890 after a public subscription organized by Claude Monet. The painting is on display at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Jennifer Anne Saville is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. Saville works and lives in Oxford, England and she is known for her large-scale painted depictions of nude women. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Some paintings are small one foot by one foot paintings while other are large nine feet by seven feet paintings. Monumental subjects come from pathology textbooks that she has studied that informed her on injury to bruise, burns, and deformity. John gray commented: As I see it, Jenny Saville's work expresses a parallel project of reclaiming the body from personality. Saville worked with many models who under went cosmetic surgery to reshape a portion of their body. In doing that, she captures "marks of personality for the flesh" and together embrace how we can be the writers of our own lives.
The BP Portrait Award is an annual portraiture competition held at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. It is the successor to the John Player Portrait Award. It is the most important portrait prize in the world, and is reputedly one of the most prestigious competitions in contemporary art.
Dame Laura Knight, was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for women artists.
Alison Watt OBE FRSE RSA is a British painter who first came to national attention while still at college when she won the 1987 Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Sara Shamma is a UK-based Syrian artist whose paintings are figurative in style. The importance of storytelling and narrative is paramount in her work. Shamma has a long-standing interest in the psychology associated with the suffering of individuals and has made work on the subject of war, modern slavery and human trafficking. Her works can be divided into series that reflect prolonged periods of research.
Annie Louisa Swynnerton was a British painter best known for her portrait and symbolist works. She studied at Manchester School of Art and at the Académie Julian, before basing herself in the artistic community in Rome with her husband, the monumental sculptor Joseph Swynnerton. Swynnerton was influenced by George Frederic Watts and Edward Burne-Jones. John Singer Sargent appreciated her work and helped her to become the first elected woman member at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1922. Swynnerton painted portraits of Henry James and Millicent Fawcett. Her main public collection of works are in Manchester Art Gallery, but individual works are also held in a few other English cities, as well as can also be seen in Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, and two in Melbourne, Australia. Annie was a close friend of leading suffragists of the day, notably the Pankhurst family.
The nude, as a form of visual art that focuses on the unclothed human figure, is an enduring tradition in Western art. It was a preoccupation of Ancient Greek art, and after a semi-dormant period in the Middle Ages returned to a central position with the Renaissance. Unclothed figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as history painting, including allegorical and religious art, portraiture, or the decorative arts. From prehistory to the earliest civilizations, nude female figures are generally understood to be symbols of fertility or well-being.
Tai-Shan Schierenberg is a British portrait painter, based in London. He was the joint winner of the 1989 BP Portrait Award and is Head of Painting at the Art Academy in London.
The New York Academy of Art is a private art school in Tribeca, New York City. The academy offers a Master of Fine Arts degree with a focus on technical training and critical discourse as well as a Post-baccalaureate Certificate of Fine Art. The school annually hosts two public events: the TriBeCa Ball and the fund-raising auction Take Home a Nude, both known to attract high profile guests.
Carl Randall is a British figurative painter, whose work is based on images of modern Japan and London.
Robert Philipp was an American painter influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and known for his nudes, still lifes, and portraits of attractive women and Hollywood stars. Noted art critic Henry McBride called Philipp one of America's top six painters of his generation. He was an instructor of painting at the Art Students League of New York for 33 years, the American artist Itshak Holtz was a student of Philipp. Philipp was Secretary of the National Academy of Design, and National Academician, Benjamin Franklin Fellow, Royal Society of Arts in London. He was married to model and fellow artist Rochelle ("Shelly") Post, who frequently posed for him until her death in 1971. His compositions and painting style have been compared to the art of Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Philipp won prizes in most of the important exhibitions of his time, and his paintings are in numerous museums and important private collections.
Joan Semmel is an American feminist painter, professor, and writer. She is best known for her large scale realistic nude self portraits as seen from her perspective looking down.
Daniel Maidman is a painter and art writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. His art and writing reflect eclectic tastes, with an emphasis on realism.
Stephanie Deshpande is a contemporary American painter, best known for her portraits and narrative paintings. She currently lives in northern New Jersey.
Alonsa Guevara is a Chilean contemporary realist oil painter living and working in New York City. Her paintings are a depiction of imaginary worlds that mix fantastical and believable traits.
Clarity Haynes is a queer feminist American artist and writer. She currently lives and works in New York, NY. Haynes is best known for her unconventional painted portraits of torsos, focusing on queer, trans, cis female and nonbinary bodies. She is a former member of the tART Collective and the Corpus VI Collective.
Hynek Martinec is a Czech-British painter, who graduated from the Studio of Classical Painting Techniques under the supervision of Prof. Zdeněk Beran at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. After his studies he left for Paris (2005-2007) and since 2007 has been living in London. He received the prestigious BP Young Artist Award (2007) for his hyperrealistic portraits. His paintings are inspired by Old Masters and/or photographs, which link the past with the future, using modern technologies.
Roni Taharlev is an Israeli figurative painter.
