The National Portrait Gallery has announced three artists on its shortlist for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024. These nominees, selected from a pool of 1,647 entries from 62 countries, include British painters Isabella Watling, Antony Williams, and Catherine Chambers.
The Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award grants the first prize winner £35,000 ($43,500), and places the selected artwork in the National Portrait Gallery’s “History Makers” exhibition space. Second and third-place winners receive £12,000 ($14,900) and £10,000 ($12,500), respectively. These three winners will also be featured among 47 other entries in a final exhibition at the gallery, on view from July 11th to October 27th.
London-based Isabella Watling was selected for her portrait Zizi (2023), a painting depicting the artist’s friend. Watling studied at the Charles H. Cecil Studio in Florence, where she learned to create life-size portraits. Her work has previously been honored by The Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Prize, and her work The Importance of Being Glenn (2012) was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.
Trained at Farnham College of Art and Portsmouth University, Antony Williams is being honored for his egg tempera on a wooden board work Jacqueline with Still Life (2020). This painting captures a model, Jacqueline, who williams consistently works with, laying on a pillow beneath a table adorned with various objects, such as a toy dinosaur and a model house. The artist has been exhibited in 10 previous Portrait Award exhibitions, ranging from 1995 to 2020.
Catherine Chambers’s selected painting, Lying (2020), features the artist’s friend asleep, fully dressed in jeans and a soccer jersey. The artist, who previously lived in Ethiopia for a number of years, has exhibited at the Embassy of Ethiopia, the Royal Academy of Arts, and the Millennium Gallery. The artist graduated from the University of the West of England in 2012, where she studied drawing and applied arts. Her oil paintings often focus on friends of hers, focused distinctly on the exact time and place of its inception.
On July 9th, the National Portrait Gallery will also select one additional artist for its Young Artist Award. This artist, between the ages of 18 and 30, will receive £9,000 ($11,100).
