At 91, Rose Wylie Is Still Britain's Rebel Artist

Summary

• British painter Rose Wylie is presenting her largest painting survey at the Royal Academy of Arts in London
• Running through April 19, The Picture Comes First features over 90 pieces, including previously unseen paintings and drawings

Rose Wylie has always had a taste for the unruly. Having received her big, art world break in her seventies, the celebrated late bloomer is firmly in her prime, with her largest-ever show, The Picture Comes First, now up at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

Wylie, a British painter, draws from life as its lived. She culls inspiration from her immediate surroundings, like the flowers in her garden, as readily art history, celebrity, cinema and sport. She renders subjects with a childlike immediacy — a figurative disobedience against the expected pretentiousness of art’s old guard. Her canvases are colorful and vast; they make the case for play without coming at the expense of equally serious, striking moments.

The Picture Comes First gathers over 90 works, including Wylie’s most iconic to never-before-seen compositions. Organized thematically, the show dives deep, telling the story of her impressive career. It begins with early family life in London, surviving The Blitz as a young girl, then moving into her time taking up anatomical drawing and figurative painting at Folkestone and Dover School of Art in the 1950s. Her time at university was followed by a three-decade hiatus from art, in order to raise a family, and in her fifties, she picked up the brush again, devoting herself to her practice with newfound moment.

The exhibition includes Room Project 2002–3, her first major series to receive major critical acclaim, revealing her expansive ambition to create immersive, playful worlds populated by cats, paper dolls and Olympic swimmers. Other notable works on view include the Film Notes series, “Black Strap (Red Fly)” and “Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win).”

Wylie’s spirit shines through the unapologetic quality of her work, making us reconsider the expectation of painting. The Royal Academy showcase also includes four large monochromatic works made using her hands directly onto canvas, shedding light on her delightfully tactile process, while imbuing the works with a viscerality that embodies the joy and urgency of her ideas.

Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First is now on view in London through April 19.

The Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House,
Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD,
United Kingdom