Exploring the Portrait Award 2025 Exhibition

On Tuesday, the Fifth Year artists ventured up to London to explore the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2025 at the National Portrait Gallery. This award celebrates the very best in contemporary portraiture and is one of the most important platforms for portrait painters today. This year there were 46 captivating portraits on display, demonstrating a variety of approaches from classic to contemporary innovative techniques, and encouraging viewers to reflect on the creativity of the artists’ processes and complexity of skill.

Our pupils each chose pieces that they felt could complement their GCSE coursework themes and responded in depth by analysing artists intentions and their own interpretations, considering theme, style, technique, colour palette, composition, symbolism etc. 

After lunch in Trafalgar Square and a brisk walk down Whitehall and across Parliament Square taking reference photos as they went, students spent the afternoon in the Tate Britain exploring the permanent collection which houses displays exploring 500 years of British art and its many stories and voices from the Pre-Rapahelites to David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Lubaina Himid. Tate Britain is also home to the world’s largest collection of works by JMW Turner.

It was a very successful and productive day which promises to inspire some unique and exciting coursework outcomes.