Reverse © Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Courtesy Gagosian

I recently enjoyed a retrospective of the work of Jenny Saville. (‘The Anatomy of Painting’ is at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 7 September.)

‘I started to think about not just the anatomy of the body, but about the anatomy of a painting.’
Jenny Saville

Born in Cambridge in 1970, Saville burst onto the British art scene following her acclaimed 1992 degree show at the Glasgow School of Art. Her monumental nudes, created with thick layers of oil paint, confront us with curved hips and rolling flesh; plump tummies and soft breasts. This is the human body raw and real, liberated from insecurities, glorying in its imperfections.

'I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies, those that emulate contemporary life, they're what I find most interesting.’

*Drift* by Jenny Saville, 2020-2022 © Jenny Saville, Courtesy Gagosian

Saville is inspired by art history. She also employs photography and draws on images from medical texts. Generally working with her canvas spread out on the floor before her, she paints with radiant colours, soft flesh-tones lifted by luscious pinks, yellows and reds. She straddles naturalism and abstraction, constructing her own reality. And in so doing, she reframes the female nude.

'There is a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the male fantasy of what the female body is. I don’t think there is anything wrong with beauty. It’s just what women think is beautiful can be different. And there can be a beauty in individualism. If there is a wart or a scar, this can be beautiful, in a sense, when you paint it.’

When Saville had children, she found it time-efficient to focus on charcoal drawings. (‘You could start and stop with ease.’) With overlapping figures, her tender mother-and-child sketches capture an infant’s restless energy and a parent’s loving embrace.

Most striking of all are Saville’s repeated images of the human face. Painted on a huge canvas from a low-to-high perspective, the face becomes a strange, intimate landscape to be examined and explored.

‘I enjoy working on a large scale, so that, when you’re up close, the painting goes beyond your body and it’s all about the paint.’

*Latent* © Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Courtesy Gagosian

Saville presents us with beaten, bruised and bloodied heads; damaged and dimpled skin; cut lips and scarlet birthmarks. Her subjects, mostly young women, look straight at us. They are at once vulnerable and strong. Are these real people? Are they victims? Are they conscious? These faces speak to us of the integration of physical and mental experience; of lives spent negotiating countless challenges. They seem very much of our age.

'I do hope I play out the contradictions that I feel, all the anxieties and dilemmas.’

Saville reminds us of the old media principle: focus and weight. The impact of her themes is amplified by their scale and frequency. She encourages us to regard each other carefully and critically; to recognise the raw, visceral, articulate power of the human face.

'If there’s a narrative, I want it in the flesh.’

Messenger© Jenny Saville. All rights reserved

'I've been crying, because I'm lonely.
Smiles have all turned to tears.
Tears won't wash away the fears,
That you're never, never gonna return,
To ease the fire that within me burns.
You keep me crying, baby, for you.
You keep me sighing, baby, for you.
I want you to hurry,
Come on, boy, see about me.

I've given up my friends just for you.
My friends have gone and you have too.
No peace shall I find,
Until you come back and be mine.
No matter what you do or say,
I'm gonna love you anyway.
You keep me crying, baby, for you.
Keep me sighing, baby, for you
I want you to hurry,
Come on, boy, and see about me.’

Barbara Mason, ‘Come See About Me’ (L Dozier / B Holland / E Holland)

No. 527