Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting Conquers the Portrait Gallery

It seemed almost unbelievable, but until 2025 no major British institution had given Jenny Saville a museum survey of her own. The National Portrait Gallery put that right with 'The Anatomy of Painting', gathering around 45 works from three decades of her career.

Saville exploded onto the scene with her 1992 Glasgow degree show; her vast, fleshy, unsparing canvases — beginning here with the breakthrough 'Propped' — helped drag figurative painting back to the centre of contemporary art.

Built in close collaboration with the artist over six years, the show traced her dialogue with art history, from de Kooning and Freud to the very anatomy of paint itself. Monumental, raw and alive.

Image: “Anatomical drawing by W. Hollar, after Leonardo da Vinci. Wellcome L0004594” — Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.