‘Reverse’ by Jenny Saville (2025)

Dear Readers, there’s no doubt that the portraits painted by Jenny Saville can be divisive – as I walked around the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, you could see people grimacing, scratching their heads and sometimes literally backing away, because these portraits are often on a monumental scale, towering above the viewer. So much flesh! I’m reminded a little of the work of Lucian Freud, and yet…Saville’s portraits have a visceral quality. They seem alive, whereas those of Freud often resemble cadavers more closely than anything living. There is a vivacity and energy to her work that challenges us to look more closely.

One photographic image, of a youngster with a port-wine birthmark, has been reimagined by Saville several times, and was the cover of a Manic Street Preachers album (subsequently banned by several supermarkets because the image was felt to be too disturbing).

Stare – Red (Saville, 2009)

Some of the images are beautiful, and yet all seem to depict vulnerability, and a kind of honesty.

Chasah (Saville, 2020)

And some depict power. The ‘contour lines’ on this monumental figure of Saville (Plan, 1993) can be read in a variety of ways. They link the body to the geography of the landscape, and yet Saville explains that these are also the marks that are used by surgeons prior to liposuction.

The contour lines are not simply painted on, but gouged out of the paint.

And there is no doubting Saville’s mastery of the human form – there are charcoal drawings here too, and some interesting comparisons with Old Master paintings. But more than anything, Saville’s exhibition finds her an honest broker when it comes to the human form, with all its fragility and strength, its beauty and ugliness.

If you want to see it, though, you’ll have to get a move on, as the exhibition finishes on Sunday 7th September. Details here.