Moira Cameron has won the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2025 for her painting A Life Lived (2024). As the first-place winner, the British painter will receive a cash award of £35,000 ($47,100). Now in its 43rd year, the annual award is organized by London’s National Portrait Gallery to recognize outstanding achievements in contemporary portraiture.
Cameron’s A Life Lived is currently on view alongside 45 portraits at the National Portrait Gallery through October 12th. The work depicts a younger version of the artist, inspired by a self-portrait from around 40 years ago. This painting shows an older woman seated in a blue armchair, her posture conveying contemplation and fatigue. Cameron used pastels, spray paint, and thick layers of oil paint—with some layers scratched or washed away—to create its textured, expressive surface.
Trained at Ravensbourne College of Art and Chelsea College of Art, Cameron is currently presenting her first solo exhibition in London with Vigo Gallery. For “Delacroix,” the artist reimagines Eugène Delacroix’s famed portrait Women of Algiers (1834/1849), rethinking this image and portraiture through a contemporary feminist lens. Vigo will also present new works by the artist at the Armory Show later this year.
Second prize in the competition went to British painter Tim Benson for Cliff, Outreach Worker (2024), granting the artist £12,000 ($16,100). The oil portrait shows Clifford Dobbs, a London outreach worker with a facial difference caused by a broken jaw. This is part of Benson’s series depicting close-ups of people with facial differences. Realist painter oil Martyn Harris took third place and a £10,000 ($13,400) prize for Memories (2024), a portrait of an older woman painted over three sittings.
The National Portrait Gallery also announced the winner of its Young Artist Award: American painter Michelle Liu for Kofi (2024). Based in London, Liu studied at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and has exhibited at London’s Wimbledon Art Fair and the Chelsea Arts Society. She will be awarded £9,000 ($12,100) for her portrait.
