HIGHLIGHTS | British Art Fair 2023 – Saatchi Gallery

This year’s edition of British Art Fair is the best I’ve attended so far. The works are more interesting and varied, and a new SOLO Contemporary section adds some much-needed flavour. Simple as that.

These are the top 10 works I don’t think you should miss:

Lucian Freud, Study for Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait), 1946 (Osborne Samuel, stand 2)

This small drawing is instantly recognisable as being an early idea for one of Freud’s most famous early self-portraits. It appears to have been cut from a larger sheet of sketches.

Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, Portrait of Florence Forsyth, c.1918-19 (Patrick Bourne & Co., stand 7)

Brockhurst’s exceptional attention to detail and modelling, plus his inspiration from Renaissance portraits, has rapidly increased my appreciation for him as a portraitist, in painting and in printmaking.

Paul Feiler, Over the Garden Wall: Canynge House, Clifton, 1948/49 (The Redfern Gallery, stand 8)

Lill Tschudi, In the Circus, 1932 (this impression from the USA edition, 1950) (The Fine Art Society Ltd, stand 12)

Tschudi doesn’t get as much attention as the other Grosvenor School printmakers, but her linocuts are just as dynamic and incredible.

Jason Shulman, Behold, 2023 (Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, stand 17)

The premise and execution of this light sculpture is so ridiculously simple, yet one is still completely blown away by how that mandorla effect still happens!