Sir William Dobell was an Australian portrait and landscape artist of the 20th century. Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on three occasions. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour.
Evert Ploeg is one of Australia's most highly regarded portrait painters, who has won a range of painting prizes, such as the 1999 and 2007 Archibald Prize and was awarded the highly coveted 'Signature Status' of The Portrait Society of America.
Antony Micallef is a British contemporary artist and painter working in London.
Stuart Pearson Wright is an English portrait artist, winner of the BP Portrait Award.
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a charity based at Carlton House Terrace, SW1, London that promotes the practice and appreciation of portraiture art.
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.
Jonathan Yeo is a British artist who rose to international prominence in his early 20s as a contemporary portraitist, having painted Kevin Spacey, Dennis Hopper, Cara Delevingne, Damien Hirst, Prince Philip, Erin O'Connor, Tony Blair, and David Cameron among others. GQ has called him 'one of the world's most in-demand portraitists'. He was educated at Westminster School.
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.
Paul Emsley is a British artist who worked in South Africa until 1996 and is now resident in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England. He is a former lecturer at the Stellenbosch University and the 2007 winner of the BP Portrait Award for portrait painting. His work can be found in most public collections in South Africa, The National Portrait Gallery London and The British Museum. He is known for his large detailed images of people, animals and flowers. There was a major retrospective of his work in 2012 at the Sasol Art Gallery in Stellenbosch. He is represented in the UK by the Redfern Gallery and in South Africa by Everard Read. Emsley's portrait of the Princess of Wales is on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Other notable portraits include Nelson Mandela, Sir V. S. Naipaul, Michael Simpson and William Kentridge.
Vincent Michael Brown is an English artist and portrait painter, composer and musician, and co-founder of Browns' Arts Centre, an art school and studio located at The Clock Tower Association in Warmley, Bristol.
Ian Cumberland is an Irish visual artist. He was born in Banbridge, Co. Down, 1983. His work focuses on portraits with his paintings typically using oils as the primary media. He studied fine art at the University of Ulster. He has won several prizes, the most significant of which was the Davy Portrait Award in 2010. In 2019 and 2020 Cumberland deals in his work with increased commercialization, technological development and its effects on the individual. In doing so, he creates scenes that seem like a private snapshot and transport the viewer into a voyeuristic experience. He develops these by integrating his paintings into an installation consisting of audio and video works, neon light, sculptures and other plastic materials. Through this kind of deconstruction of his created sceneries he achieves a visual construction that alienates the human being within his culture, the influence of the mass media and data surveillance.
Irene Ferguson is an artist best known for her portrait paintings. Ferguson was awarded the New Zealand Portraiture Award in 2008.
Carl Randall is a British figurative painter, whose work is based on images of modern Japan and London.
Miriam Escofet is a Spanish portrait painter who lives and works in London.
Paul Benney is a British artist who rose to international prominence as a contemporary artist whilst living and working in New York in the 1980s and 1990s in the UK as an award-winning portraitist.
Nahem Shoa is a contemporary London painter best known for his series of portraits, collectively called Giant Heads, which were painted at up to 15 times life size. He is also notable for having increased the number of portraits of Black and mixed-race British people on display in British museums. Shoa has won a number of awards and prizes for his work, and serves on The Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery's Contemporary Arts Panel. His work has been exhibited in London's National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy as well as at galleries and museums in other parts of the UK.
Lionel Smit is a South African artist, known for his contemporary portraiture executed through large canvases and sculptures.
Frances Borden is a British artist known for portraiture, particularly self-portraiture. She has been a prizewinner in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London on three occasions.
Raoof Haghighi is an Iranian-born British artist, known for his portraiture and realism.
Jan Mikulka is a Czech painter. He is known for his still-life painting and figurative and portrait work. He was awarded three times at the international competition held by The Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London, a showcase of contemporary portraiture. In 2011 he won the BP Portrait Award, two years later the first prize for self-portraiture, and in 2016 The Changing Faces Prize, also awarded by The Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
