Review: Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery
- Jenny Munoz
- Jul 22
- 5 min read

Jenny Saville, "Reverse" (2002-03). Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting is a visceral, decades-spanning exhibition that redefines portraiture. Her ferocious, flesh-filled canvases confront beauty, body, and being with raw intensity. The show resists resolution—inviting us into the messy, tender complexity of embodiment. More than a retrospective, it's an anatomy not just of painting, but of what it means to be alive.
Saville first gained widespread recognition in the early 1990s after her standout graduate exhibition at the Glasgow School of Art. Born in Cambridge in 1970, she became one of the standout figures among the Young British Artists (YBAs), the group that helped define a new era of British contemporary art. Saville reinvigorated figurative painting at a time when the genre was considered outdated, challenging traditional ideals of beauty and the human form. Her visceral portraits—built from thick, expressive layers of paint—embody both painterly obsession and a radical reclamation of the female form. Whether working in charcoal or oil, her practice continuously explores the tension between surface and depth, realism and abstraction, theory and flesh.
It is a rare privilege to witness a body of work as powerful and expansive as Jenny Saville's in person—especially within the hallowed halls of the National Portrait Gallery, a space historically devoted to more traditional portraiture. The Anatomy of a Painting marks a bold and refreshing shift for the NPG, its first major exhibition dedicated to contemporary painting since its recent reopening. And what a choice of artist—Saville, whose ferocious, flesh-filled canvases helped catapult figurative painting back into the heart of contemporary art.
The Anatomy of a Painting is the largest UK museum exhibition dedicated to Saville, spanning 45 works and three decades of her career. It's a visceral, commanding survey that not only charts the evolution of her technique, but also reveals her unflinching commitment to the human body as a site of both intimacy and confrontation. There is a sense of immediacy in her surfaces—paint that appears to be still wet, still breathing.

Jenny Saville, "Propped" (1992). Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.
From her monumental early works, such as Propped (1992), which greet you at the entrance, to more recent, colour-driven head studies and tangled figural compositions, the show captures the sheer physicality of her process. Propped, famously sold for $12.4 million at Sotheby's in 2018—at the time making Saville the most expensive living female artist—is here in the flesh. And standing before it, the record price becomes understandable: this painting is alive. The monumental self-portrait radiates defiance and vulnerability. The inscriptions across her body, borrowed from Luce Irigaray, are no longer just feminist theory—they're embedded in flesh and pigment.
Saville's canvases resist easy categorisation. She has never painted for aesthetic approval. Her nudes challenge conventions of beauty; her textures mimic bruised skin, mottled fat, surgical scars. Plan (1993), which features a female torso mapped like a surgical blueprint, hovers between medical illustration and abstract topography. You don't just look at these paintings—you inhabit them. At times, they engulf you, evoking Rothko's intention to overwhelm the viewer through scale and proximity. Indeed, one must stand close to Saville's canvases to truly appreciate the laborious buildup of paint and the tension between mark-making and realism.

Jenny Saville, Left to Right: "Red Stare Head II" (2011), "Bleach" (2008), "Shadow Head" (2007-13). Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.
What struck me most, though, was not just the monumental scale or physical intensity—but the eyes. In painting after painting, no matter how deconstructed or chaotic the composition, the eyes remain startlingly photorealistic. They anchor the chaos. In Red Stare Head II and Shadow Head, the painted gaze pins the viewer in place. We, the observers, become the observed. This shift—from voyeur to "vu"—is one of the exhibition's most psychologically affecting moments.
Saville's palette has undergone notable evolution over the years. The early works pulse with muted pinks, ochres, and the buttery yellows reminiscent of Freud. In later pieces, colour becomes freer, looser—her brushstrokes more gestural, abstracted. There is a confidence in these newer works, a kind of painterly improvisation that's less about perfection and more about exploration. The constant, however, is her devotion to the body: not as idealised form, but as lived, leaky, aging, bleeding, bruised flesh.

Jenny Saville, "Plan" (1993). Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.
Saville's influence on contemporary painting is undeniable. She was once the Young British Artist who painted herself "warts and all"—with stretch marks, cellulite, and an unflinching stare. Today, she stands not just as a defiant voice in feminist art history but as a visual philosopher of the flesh. Her works feel timeless because they are rooted in the primal—birth, pain, intimacy, embodiment.
It's worth noting that while Saville recently lost her title as the most expensive living female artist to Marlene Dumas (Miss January sold for a record-breaking sum at Christie's this May), there is something grounding about this exhibition that surpasses auction records. Seeing these works in person is a reminder that painting—real, thick, messy, and complicated painting—still matters. Still shocks. Still heals.
This exhibition was seven years in the making, and you feel it in every inch of its curation. It's a testament to Saville's legacy, yes—but also to her restlessness, her refusal to settle. The Anatomy of a Painting is more than an exhibition—it is an anatomy, not just of painting, but of being.
'Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting,' Available until 7 September 2025 at the National Portrait Gallery, npg.org.uk
£21 / 23.50 with donation
Free for Members

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of a Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. Image by Jenny Munoz.
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xx Jenny