Event Item: 00011

BP Portrait Award

Exhibition: 14th Jun 2007 to 16th Sep 2007

Source: http://www.npg.org.uk

A hugely successful and popular annual event, the Portrait Award, now in its 28th year at the National Portrait Gallery in London and 18th year of sponsorship by BP, is aimed at encouraging artists to focus upon and develop the theme of portraiture within their work.

On Wednesday 20 June the winner of the BP Portrait Award 2007 was announced by Bianca Jagger at the National Portrait Gallery. In a record-entry year that coincided with the competition dropping its upper age limit, the prestigious first prize was won by 59-year-old artist Paul Emsley from Bradford-upon-Avon, near Bath. His winning portrait is a striking large-scale study of the face of 67-year-old neighbouring artist Michael Simpson. Paul wins £25,000 and a commission, at the National Portrait Gallery Trustees' discretion, worth £4,000.

In the 18th year of BP support, and at the start of its renewed sponsorship term of five years, the annual Portrait Award this year includes for the first time a Young Artist Award for those aged between 18 and 30. It has been won by Czech artist Hynek Martinec for his portrait of his girlfriend Zuzana. Also announced this year, the BP Travel Award goes, for the first time, to two artists who will go on to portray people encountered on trips to India and Scandinavia.

For the first time in its 16-year history the BP Travel Award, an annual prize which allows artists to expand their horizons, goes to two winners. In the 1980s artist Timothy Hyman (b1946), became friendly with a close-knit group of Indian artists - most of them now in the sixties. A few weeks ago he returned to India briefly, after a gap of more than ten years, and he now plans to spend more time there to portray each of these artists, and to make a large commemorative group portrait. Artist Gareth Reid (b1974) is going to travel around the coast of Denmark, visiting some of the hundreds of Scandinavian "vinterbaderklubs" (winterbathing clubs) in Jylland, Fyn and Sjaelland and to paint their members who, during the winter months regularly, of their own free will, swim in man-made ice holes.

Following a record 1,870 entries, compared to 1,113 in 2006, 60 portraits have been selected for the exhibition, including the four prize winners and Toby Wiggins, the winner of the BP Travel Award 2006.