Jonathan Yeo

Jonathan Yeo is a self-taught figurative artist, often credited with reinvigorating British portraiture in the twenty first century. He has painted politicians, activists, actors, writers and artists. Among these, notable sitters include David Cameron, the Duke of Edinburgh, Malala Yousafzai and Damien Hirst. Truly a portraitist for the modern age, he employs a variety of media including photography and collage, while exploring contemporary themes such as social media, cosmetic surgery and pornography. Yeo’s first major portrait commission came in 1993 from anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. He continued to receive a steady stream of high-profile commissions, but was propelled into the public limelight in 2007 due to publicity surrounding his controversial portrait of, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair wearing a blood-red poppy. In 2013, the National Portrait Gallery staged a critically-acclaimed mid-career retrospective of Yeo and was attended by an astonishing 290,000 visitors. In 2016, his largest retrospective to date was held at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark.

Having received no formal training beyond a few life drawing classes, artistic influences have filtered through Yeo’s work in a piecemeal fashion. He cites David Bomberg, Georges Braque and Picasso - works he saw at Tate as a teenager - as early inspirations. The uncompromising scrutiny with which Yeo approaches his sitters has meant he if often compared to Lucian Freud. Yeo denies the influence was conscious, but admits their similarities, acknowledging that Freud’s intuitive understanding of colour is something to be admired by all portrait painters. Working from photographs and direct observation, with sittings often spanning several weeks or months his portraits represent a series of encounters, inevitably imbued with a personal response to his subjects. In his studio, Yeo sits high up above his sitters, who he places beneath carefully manipulated studio lighting while he works wet paint rapidly onto large canvases.

Yeo’s distinctive style combines both naturalistic colouring and finely rendered detail with painterly, abstract backgrounds, as seen in Tamara Rojo. Addressing issues of fame and public image, Yeo paints faces which ‘have become common property all of the world’.[1] The celebrity status of Rojo is of no exception. Rojo was born in Canada to Spanish parents and later studied at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. She joined the Scottish National Ballet in 1996 before she was invited to become principal of the Royal Ballet in 2000 and later adopted the position of English National Ballet artistic director. In January 2016 Tamara Rojo became D.A. Magna Cum Laude, presenting her thesis ‘Psychological Profile of the Elite Dancer – Vocational Characteristics of the Professional Dancer’ at Rey Juan Carlos University. Later that year she was awarded a CBE and has since been applauded for her immensely skillful and moving performances.

Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, envisions the future of portraiture in Yeo’s portraits;

Jonathan Yeo is one of the most highly regarded and innovative portrait painters working in Britain (or, indeed, anywhere) today... Renowned for his distinctive, highly figurative canvases and striking collages, he employs a range of media and techniques to create a diverse body of work that expands the traditional parameters of portraiture. His ongoing innovations in theme and narrative and his engagement with society continue to challenge the genre of portraiture and reinvigorate it for the present era.[2]

[1] P. M. Hornung, ‘Jonathan Yeo: Portrait Painter’, Johnathan Yeo: In The Flesh (Denmark: The Museum of Natural History at Frederiksborg, 2016) p.143.

[2] N. Cullinan (2016), Jonathan Yeo [Available at: https://www.jonathanyeo.com/ (Accessed 04.02.2020).