Artists Through The Eyes Of Artists At Pallant House Gallery

A powerful exploration of artistic connection and mutual gaze, Seeing Each Other: Artists Through the Eyes of Artists is a new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery featuring intimate portrayals and tributes of celebrated modern and contemporary artists, from Francis Bacon and David Hockney to Tracey Emin and Lubaina Himid—revealing the creative bonds that shape British art across generations.

Step into a living constellation of faces, gazes, and friendships at Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists, the sweeping new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Spanning 125 years of British art, this poetic gathering of over 130 works —from drawings and sculpture to film and photography—unveils the tender, complex, and often electrifying relationships between artists and their creative kin.

More than 80 voices echo through this show, including Lucian Freud, Paula Rego, Lubaina Himid, David Hockney, Lee Miller, Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth, Maggie Hambling and Peter Blake. Their portraits do more than capture likeness; they tell stories of admiration, rivalry, love, and influence—from the intimate circles of the Bloomsbury Group to the bold bravado of the Young British Artists. Covering a period of 125 years–and featuring drawings, installations, paintings, photography, prints and sculpture–the exhibition sets out to document some of the most intriguing images by artists of their creative peers.

At its heart, this is an exhibition of artistic dialogue—painter meeting painter, friend painting friend, and women artists capturing the essence of their peers with unwavering insight. Lindsay Mendick’s ceramic tribute to Tracey Emin reshapes a moment of performance art into permanent form, while Lubaina Himid’s painted wooden figures honour a lineage of women whose images and ideas continue to shape the canon, and Mary McCartney’s enigmatic image of Tracey Emin as Frida Kahlo captures the spirit of both women.

Highlights include; a projection of Johnny Shand Kydd’s enigmatic images capturing the YBAs when they were young and hanging out at The Groucho Club and Colony Rooms in Soho; and new commissions including a magical portrait by Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year winner Curtis Holder and double portraits by artists and long-term friends Ishbel Myerscough and Chantal Joffe studied together at the Glasgow School of Art.

From previously unseen gems like Seóirse MacAntisionnaigh’s 1924 painting The Slade Tea Party–of Slade School students including Mary Adshead and Eileen Agar–to Curtis Holder’s luminous new portrait, each piece hums with connection. Whether glimpsing Johnny Shand Kydd’s Soho snapshots of the YBAs or lingering before Ishbel Myerscough and Chantal Joffe’s dual portraits of one another, visitors are invited into a world where artists become mirrors.

While there are many husband-and-wife artist couples featured who have painted or drawn portraits of each other–from Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping to Winifred and Ben Nicholson, and Lucian Freud and Celia Paul –there is also a strong presence of women artists who have immortalised fellow women artists through portraiture.

Lindsay Mendick’s ceramic ode to Tracey Emin in the form of a ceramic reimagining of Emin’s 1996 performance Exorcism of the last painting I ever made is a highlight, as is Lubaina Himid’s sculptural artwork featuring painted wooden full length portraits of female artists from past and present, including Bridget Riley, Élisabeth Vigée-le Brun, Frida Kahlo and Himid’s friend, artist Claudette Johnson.

The exhibition features artists’ portraits of fellow artists spanning several genres, movements and locations, starting at the turn of the 20th century with portraits of Walter Sickert, Sylvia Gosse and Nina Hamnett, through to The Bloomsbury Set in London and Suffolk, Newlyn School in Cornwall, pre-war modernism in Paris, to Pop Art art, the London School, YBAs and finally to contemporary artists and photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Mary McCartney and the British Black

This final chapter in Pallant House’s trilogy on modern British art—following still life and landscape—offers a deeply human tapestry. Curated by Melanie Vandenbrouck with scholarly grace, Seeing Each Other is a celebration of the artist’s gaze—not just outward, but across the room, into the eyes of someone who understands.

Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists runs from 17 May to 2 November 2025 at Pallant House in Chichester, Sussex.