There’s a room in my flat that I rather grandly refer

---

nginx/1.17.10 to as ‘The Library’. About 20 years ago I had it fitted out with shelves up to the

404 Not Found

ceiling with nicely boxed-in corners. It’s painted deep red. For a few years it looked splendid, then it gradually started filling up with junk. Now it’s waist-deep in motorcycle parts, leather […]

The self-portrait by Van Dyck is the

404 Not Found

subject of a deferred export licence in order to give British museums an opportunity to find the £12.5 million required to stop it

---

nginx/1.17.10 going abroad. The NPG, where the picture is currently on show drumming up donations, has started a campaign to raise £12.5 million to acquire the picture. They have raised £1.2 […]

THE LINE IT IS DRAWN … BADLY The now routine phenomenon of paintings by celebrities

---

nginx/1.17.10 shown in serious galleries defies

404 Not Found

belief. You’d think they’d be sniffy about this 404 Not Found sort of populist stunt; and you’d be wrong. However bad the work is people swarm to see it, hexed by the name. Photos and paintings by pop stars and […]

Recent paintings made in Japan will be showing at my exhibition ‘In The Footsteps of Hiroshige: The Tokaido Highway and Portraits of Modern

---

nginx/1.17.10 Japan’, at

404 Not Found

the National Portrait Gallery from June 20th to September 15th (then touring the UK until May 2014). The exhibition is the result of being awarded the 2012 BP Portrait Award. My proposal for the award […]

This is the portrait of an intelligent, thoughtful and educated sitter with no less than a degree in art history. It is perfectly adequate for the boardroom of a supermarket but entirely inadequate for a national collection.

---

nginx/1.17.10 Kate deserves better. We deserve better too,

404 Not Found

and so does the future. This commission – Kate’s first official portrait – demanded an artist, […]

A portrait of the Queen by Australian

---

nginx/1.17.10 artist Ralph Heimans has gone on show 404 Not Found at the National Portrait 404 Not Found Gallery in Canberra. It shows the monarch at night in Westminster Abbey standing on the spot where she was crowned 60 years ago.

404 Not Found

She looks like a giant genie has suddenly appeared from the train of […]

Almost part of The

---

nginx/1.17.10 Season now, the only surprise these days about the annual BP Portrait Award is that the Queen doesn’t cut the ribbon and hand out the rosettes. As ever, this year is as popular with the public

404 Not Found

as any art exhibition, with large numbers jostling and genuinely engaging with the work eagerly discussing merits and demerits of […]

Out of respect for one of its recently deceased Academicians, Leonard Rosomon (1913– 2012), the Royal Academy skied one of his best works in the corner of an

404 Not Found

obscure gallery at

---

nginx/1.17.10 this year’s Summer Exhibition (until August 12th). His Committee Meeting, Royal Academy (above), 1979-1984, was on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, where it has probably never been on […]