BP Portrait Award

Gallus Gallus with Still Life and Presidents by Stuart Pearson Wright winner in 2001

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.

British Petroleum took over sponsorship of the competition in 1989 from John Player & Sons, a tobacco company, and has sponsored it since. The presence of both sponsors has triggered protests, with the group Art Not Oil (part of the international Rising Tide network) being responsible for most of those against BP.

The exhibition opens in June each year and runs until September. First prize is typically £25,000. In the early years of the century, the prize went up from £5,000, and its catchment area was gradually extended from residents of the UK and is now unrestricted. It is regarded as the best showcase of young figurative painting in Britain, and many winners have gone on to become highly collectible. In spite of its traditional and non-headline-grabbing qualities, it has been highly popular with the general public, though in recent years there has been some controversy over the choice of winners.

Past winners

• 2011 – Wim Heldens
• 2010 – Daphne Todd
• 2009 – Peter Monkman
• 2008 – Craig Wylie and Praneet Arora
• 2007 – Paul Emsley
• 2006 – Andrew Tift
• 2005 – Dean Marsh (artist)
• 2004 – Stephen Shankland
• 2003 – Charlotte Harris
• 2002 – Catherine Goodman
• 2001 – Stuart Pearson Wright
• 2000 – Victoria Russell
• 1999 – Clive Smith
• 1998 – Thomas Watson
• 1997 – James Lloyd
• 1996 – James Hague
• 1995 – Ishbel Myerscough
• 1994 – Peter Edwards
• 1993 – Philip Harris
• 1992 – Lucy Willis
• 1991 – Justin Mortimer
• 1990 – Annabel Cullen
• 1989 – Tai-Shan Schierenberg
• 1988 – Allan Ramsay
• 1987 – Alison Watt

Selected works

It has become a BP Portrait Awards convention that a single work is selected to be used prominently on that year's posters and other publicity materials, and for the cover of the year's exhibition catalogue. Recent "showcase" portraits include:

• 2011 – "Geneva", by Ilaria Rosselli del Turco
• 2010 – "Don't Be Too Serious", by Elizabeth McDonald
• 2009 – "Georgie", by Mary Jane Ansell
• 2009 (In Scotland) – "On Assi Ghat", by Edward Sutcliffe
• 2008 – "Konjit" by Maryam Foroozanfar 
• 2007 – "Winter Portrait", by Ingolv Helland
• 2006 – "Matthew", by Ben Jamie
• 2005 – "Portrait of Chantal Menard", by Sean Cheetham

BP Visitor Choice

Each year, the BP Visitor Choice competition offers visitors to the highly popular BP Portrait Award exhibition the opportunity to vote for their favourite portrait in the exhibition.

• 2011 – Jan Mikulka
• 2010 – cz: Michal Ožibko
• 2007 – cz: Hynek Martinec

External links

• Official page

• "Painting of artist's mother aged 100 wins BP Portrait Award" (telegraph.co.uk 23 June 2010)
• "BP Portrait Award 2010: Full frontal at the National Portrait Gallery" (guardian.co.uk, 23 June 2010)
• "Three finalists compete for BP Portrait award prize after record entry" (guardian.co.uk 21 April 2009)

• Search guardian.co.uk, 'National Portrait Award' (more than fifty articles, as of August 2010)
• thesundaytimes.co.uk, 'National Portrait Award' (more than eighty articles, as of August 2010)

• Art Not Oil