Faces of Fame: G F Watts X Simon Frederick

Charles Booth by George Frederic Watts, circa 1901 © National Portrait Gallery, London (L); Simon Frederick, John Sentamu, archival inkjet print, 2016 © National Portrait Gallery, London (R).

Faces of Fame: G F Watts X Simon Frederick exhibits a selection of photographs from Simon Frederick’s portrait series Black is the New Black alongside paintings from G F Watts’s Hall of Fame. These portraits have been loaned from the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection as part of its National Skills Sharing Partnership Programme.

Today, the portraits of ‘greats’ as represented by G F Watts’s Hall of Fame – nearly all of which depict white male writers, politicians, and social reformers – raise significant questions about those who Victorian art and society celebrated. Simon Frederick’s Black is the New Black uses the portrait series format to present an assembly of celebrated contemporary Black Britons.

Featuring twelve portraits from Black is the New Black and seven portraits from Watts’s Hall of Fame, the display will re-examine the representation of celebrity, race, gender, class, power and empire, allowing a critical re-evaluation of Watts and explore what a Hall of Fame might look like today.