Zuzana in Paris Studio by Hynek Martinec. © the artist
A 27-year-old Czech artist is the first winner of the BP Portrait Award Visitor's Choice - the first artist to have also been selected as a prizewinner by the judges of the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
BP exhibition visitors and competition judges often differ markedly in their choices of winning portraits. But this year, when voting closed yesterday, 478 visitors voted Hynek Martinec's Zuzana in Paris Studio - his large portrait of his girlfriend Zuzana Jungmanova, captured in microscopic facial close-up wearing sunglasses - as their favourite on display.
The picture was also the winner of BP's first Young Artist Award, with Martinec receiving a £5,000 prize.
The photographic precision of the painting has caught the imagination of over 150,000 visitors to the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery which - with two weeks still to go - is on course to be the most visited in the exhibition's 28 year history.
The large painting has proved popular for the striking detail in the execution of the sitter's hair and skin tones and in the skilled handling of reflection of the artist's studio in her sunglasses.
