Marc Dalessio wins the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 for his captivating portrait of neighbour

L-R: Jean-Denis, 2025 by Marc Dalessio © Marc Dalessio; In Our Borderlands, 2025 by Joel Nichols © Joel Nichols

Marc Dalessio has won first prize in the prestigious Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 for his portrait Jean-Denis. 

Chloe Cox was awarded the second prize for What's Mine is Yours, and third prize went to Michael Slusakowicz for Charlie and Magda. Joel Nichols wins the Young Artist Award for their portrait In Our Borderlands. 

The winning portraits are now on display as part of the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026. The exhibition features 51 portraits, selected for display by a panel of judges comprised of Senior Curator at the Turner Contemporary, Melissa Blanchflower; digital artist and set designer, Es Devlin; contemporary curator, Amy Emmerson Martin; and artist and Director of the Slade, Mary Evans.

First Prize £35,000: Marc Dalessio for Jean-Denis (Oil on linen 650mm x 500mm)

Jean-Denis, 2025 by Marc Dalessio © Marc Dalessio 

Marc Dalessio established his reputation through plein air landscapes, which were the focus of his practice for more than a decade before his recent return to portrait painting. Born in Los Angeles, Dalessio was classically trained at the renowned Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. He spent his early career producing both portraits and landscapes while also teaching at the Florence Academy of Art. 

Dalessio returned to portrait painting after settling in the southwest of France and renovating a dilapidated artist’s studio, which gave him the light and space he needed for his method of portrait painting. Testing out the studio, he began painting self-portraits and life studies of his wife and local residents. One morning his neighbour Jean-Denis arrived on his doorstop and requested a portrait. The portrait was completed over six sittings, with Dalessio playing podcasts for Jean-Denis to keep him awake as he didn’t find posing very interesting. 

Dalessio painted his sitter as he arrived, in his elegant black coat and scarf, a sliver of a white shirt just visible beneath. In keeping with his academic, atelier training, the artist paints straight to canvas with a historic four colour palette of white, ochre, red and black oils, sometimes with a red lake for glazing. Dalessio uses the sight-size method, in which the artist stands at a distance to view the picture and subject side by side to attain precise proportions. This highly observational technique allows him to paint with an immediacy that brings into focus the emotional impact of the scene. Though he seldom uses photography as part of his portrait-making, Dalessio filmed Jean-Denis to serve as an aide-mémoire of his subject’s various facial expressions when he was unavailable for sittings. 

With a notably restrained and economical use of paint, Marc Dalessio’s Jean-Denis achieves a striking immediacy, where every mark carries weight. The judges enjoyed the subtle sliver of white from the sitter’s shirt that becomes a focal point, activating the composition. The portrait offers an empathetic depiction of its subject, conveying a timeless presence that feels both regal and understated.

Second Prize £12,000: Chloe Cox for What’s Mine is Yours (Oil on canvas 900mm x 600mm)

What’s Mine is Yours, 2024 by Chloe Cox © Chloe Cox 

A self-taught artist based in Manchester, Chloe Cox has gained recognition for her intensely realistic portraits of under-represented groups, often people from African-Caribbean communities, which have been widely awarded and exhibited across the UK. In 2021 her work featured in the English Heritage commission series Painting our Past: The African Diaspora in England, in 2023 she was one of the 10 artists commissioned by the King to mark the 75^th anniversary of the Windrush crossing and her portrait of former RAF mechanic Alford Gardner is now part of the Royal Collection and was subsequently exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Windrush: Portraits of a Pioneering Generation (9 October 2023 - 1 April 2024).

 In 2024, Cox took part in the BBC documentary series Extraordinary Portraits. It was during the series that she was paired with the sitters in this portrait, Marva and Lionel Warmington, a Birmingham couple who have fostered more than 200 teenagers over the past 30 years. Cox visited their home with the TV crew to learn about their experiences and meet some of their foster children. Conversations form the foundation of Cox’s sittings, giving her time to get to know her sitters. 

Cox sketched the composition on the canvas before painstakingly building the portrait with several layers of oil paint, gradually bringing out the light and refining the images with finer brushes. Cox was struck by the balance between the couple, and the sitters are posed holding one another to reflect the harmony within their union that has sustained not just their marriage but has created stability and belonging for hundreds of young people.

Chloe Cox’s What’s Mine is Yours is a beautifully painted and life-affirming double portrait, notable for its exceptionally accomplished technique and sensitivity of handling. The judges were particularly struck by the sense of joy and uplift that the work conveys, as well as the palpable connection and love between the sitters.

Third Prize £10,000: Michael Slusakowicz for Charlie and Magda (Oil on canvas 500mm x 400mm)

Charlie and Magda, 2026 by Michael Slusakowicz © Michael Slusakowicz

Born in Krakow, Poland, Michael Slusakowicz began painting in his early teens, inspired by his art teacher and trips with his grandmother to the city’s museum and Baroque and Gothic churches. Moving to the UK in 2005, he studied at Camberwell College of Arts and lives in London, working predominantly in painting following earlier projects in performance and video. 

Driven by an interest in magical realism and the Fauvists’ use of intense colour as a tool of expression, Slusakowicz creates surreal, vivid portraits of close friends, inspired by long evenings spent together talking about politics, philosophy and their shared experience as artists. He often paints double or group scenes in which the subjects, pictured amid an abundance of greenery, are interacting in some way. One of these works, Double Portrait of Clara (2021), was selected for the 2024 Portrait Award. 

Charlie and Magda (2026) depicts two of the artist’s friends in a pensive moment. Luminous, stylised leaves and blooms, reflective of the artist’s admiration for the opulent verdure of Paul Gauguin and Henri Rousseau, add a dream-like quality to the emotionally charged scene. Slusakowicz typically begins each portrait with sketches and photographs that he uploads to his laptop and turns into a digital collage. He then translates the images onto canvas using crisp, brights oils straight from the tube, sometimes combined with hand-mixed neon paints. For his subjects’ faces, he blends colours to create a smooth transition from one shade to another and uses thin, diluted layers of paint to achieve a translucent effect. His starting point for Charlie and Magda was a previously unfinished painting that he coated with a green wash and scanned onto his computer, then juxtaposing the figures and foliage before choosing the final colour palette.

The judges thought that Michael Slusakowicz’s Charlie and Magda is a seductive and visually arresting portrait, distinguished by its impressive execution and beautiful use of colour. Eschewing a classical approach, the work is characterised by a striking originality.

Young Artist Award £9,000: Joel Nichols for In Our Borderlands (Oil on canvas 1220mm x 1520mm)

In Our Borderlands, 2025 by Joel Nichols © Joel Nichols

Born in Birmingham and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, the artist graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2024 before returning to the UK as a Rhodes Scholar to complete Masters degrees at the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. Nichol’s creative practice spans portraiture and ceramics, often exploring themes of identity, vulnerability and human connection. 

In Our Borderlands originated in an Oxford University dorm room where Nichol’s would gather with friends to foster community through sharing meals and watching films. During one gathering, Nichols noticed how a mirror in the room refracted light in multiple colours across the face of a friend, Jo, and suggested they meet again to revisit the moment in the artist’s studio.

This large-scale portrait began with several days spent sketching before committing to paint.  Nichols works slowly in a meticulous process of sustained attentiveness that they liken to an ‘act of care’ towards the subject. The majority of the artist’s time and energy was devoted to capturing Jo’s distinctive, steady gaze and the ephemeral, sometimes photographic qualities of the light using precise, fine brushstrokes and an airbrush. The detail of the figure is offset by a blended, soft-focus background, rendered to near-abstraction to create a depth of field and concentrate all attention upon the sitter. For Nichols, the value of a portrait comes from the process of creation rather than the image itself. As such, their portraits become less about producing a fixed image and more about exploring identity, agency and the dynamics of looking. 

In In Our Borderlands by Joel Nichols the judges admired the painting’s distinctly mysterious atmosphere and the technically accomplished use of light, which shapes both the psychological depth of the sitter and the spatial complexity of the composition.

“Congratulations to this year’s Portrait Award winners and to all the artists whose work has been selected for the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 exhibition. The judges were greatly impressed by the quality and range of work submitted, and I’m sure that our audience will be just as taken by the 51 works selected for the final exhibition and particularly by the four prizewinners.”
Victoria Siddall
Director, National Portrait Gallery

"This year’s works stand out for their originality, technical excellence and emotional resonance. They are a powerful reminder of the role portraiture can play in helping us better understand one another and the world around us. I am excited to see them at the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 exhibition and extend my warmest congratulations to the winners and all exhibiting artists of the competition.” 
Justin D'Agostino MH
Global CEO, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

The Portrait Award has earned a reputation as one of the most important platforms for portrait painters. The highly competitive Award encourages artists over the age of 18 to focus upon, and develop, the theme of portraiture in their work. Since its inception, the competition has attracted over 50,000 entries from more than 100 countries and the exhibition has been seen by over 6 million people. With a first prize of £35,000, it is one of the largest awards for any global art competition. The second prize winner will receive £12,000 and the third prize winner will receive £10,000. 

Included in the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award is the Young Artist Award, which aims to profile talent and help support the career development of a young artist. The winning entrant, aged between 18 and 30, will be awarded a prize of £9,000.

A commission will also be awarded to an artist. A bi-annual award, all artists chosen to exhibit in 2026 and 2027’s Portrait Award exhibitions will be considered for this commission. The winner of the 2025 Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Commission Award was Yvadney Davis, for her portrait Inset Day, which featured in the 2025 Portrait Award exhibition. The Gallery’s Trustees and Curatorial team admired how Davis’s vibrant, figurative works capture the tender expressions of human experience.