6 September 2025 - 3 August 2026
Entrance Hall, Rooms 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 22, 27, 29 and 33
One of the founding principles of the National Portrait Gallery is to collect portraits with a focus on ‘the celebrity of the person represented rather than the merit of the artist’. In a reversal of this approach, Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture foregrounds the artistic vision of nine contemporary artists who were invited to create work in dialogue with the Gallery's permanent Collection.
Iranian-born Soheila Sokhanvari (born 1964) is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant scientist’ who turned from biochemistry to art in the mid-2000s. Her background in science, however, continues to fuel her imagination and, for this commission, she has chosen to celebrate four individuals connected to the world of science from the seventeenth century to the present day.
Interspersed across the Gallery are painted portraits that shine a light on Margaret Quaine, James Barry, Margaret Burbidge and Daniela Rhodes, all of whom defied societal expectations while facing or confronting prejudice at different points in history. They are made using pigments mixed with egg tempera and applied on calf vellum in the tradition of Persian miniature painting, which the artist learnt from her father. One is also set in a brooch, evoking the history of jewellery as tokens of love and admiration.
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