Zurich Portrait Prize and Young Portrait Prize 2023 competitions open

National Gallery of Ireland announces the 2023 Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize competitions are now open.

Call-out to artists, children and young people across the country for entries

The National Gallery of Ireland today (13 April 2023) launches the Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize competitions. For the Zurich Portrait Prize, the competition showcasing contemporary portraiture, the Gallery invites submissions from across the island of Ireland, and from Irish artists living abroad. The Zurich Young Portrait Prize, now in its fifth year, is open to young people aged 18 and under. The closing date for receipt of entries for both competitions is 10pm on Wednesday 21 June 2023.
  
The Zurich Portrait Prize aims to encourage interest in contemporary portraiture and to showcase the National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland. The winner of the competition will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and will be commissioned to create a work for the national portrait collection, for which they will be awarded a further €5,000. Two additional awards of €1,500 will be given to highly commended works. 

The Zurich Young Portrait Prize, which aims to foster and support creativity, originality and self-expression in children and young people returns for its fifth year in 2023. The competition has four age categories and is open to young people of all abilities aged up to 18 from across the country. Winners in each age category and an overall winner will be chosen from a shortlist of 20 works. Winners will receive a bespoke art box and a cash prize. 

Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, said, “With the annual Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize, our aim is to showcase the work of Irish portrait artists and encourage an interest in contemporary Irish portraiture. Each year, the artists shortlisted demonstrate an incredible breadth of Irish artistic talent. We're proud to partner with Zurich Insurance plc once again this year and we look forward to seeing who and what has inspired artists of all ages to create portraits in recent times.”

Neil Freshwater, CEO of Zurich, said, “Since 2018 Zurich has been proud to support the Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize competitions. Over that time, the Prizes have showcased hundreds of talented Irish portrait artists who are based on the island of Ireland and abroad. We can’t wait to see the creativity, energy and diversity presented in the shortlist for the 2023 Prize exhibition later this year at the National Gallery of Ireland. We encourage all eligible artists to enter!”

The closing date for entries to the Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize is 10pm on Wednesday 21 June 2023.  An exhibition featuring the shortlisted works will run at the National Gallery of Ireland between 2 December 2023 and 10 March 2024. 

The highly commended artists, category winners and overall winners of the Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize, will be announced in December 2023, after the exhibitions have opened to the public at the Gallery.

Media contact:

Emma Pearson / Ciara Mooney, Communications, National Gallery of Ireland, E: [email protected] / [email protected] / 087 918 7941

Zurich Portrait Prize:

The Gallery’s annual Portrait Prize, open to artists aged 19 and over, runs for the tenth time in 2023 with Zurich as sponsor for the sixth year. The aim of the Zurich Portrait Prize is to showcase and encourage interest in contemporary portraiture, support Irish talent and to raise the profile of the long-standing and constantly evolving National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland. 

Zurich Young Portrait Prize:

Following the outstanding success of the Zurich Young Portrait Prize in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, the competition runs for a fifth year in 2023. This inclusive art competition is open to children and young people of all abilities, up to the age of 18, from across the island of Ireland. 

National Gallery of Ireland:

The National Gallery of Ireland is one of the country’s most popular visitor attractions housing the nation’s collection of European and Irish art from about 1300 to the present day, and an extensive Library & Archive. Entry to the collection is free for all to enjoy, learn and be inspired.

Zurich: 

Ireland is Zurich’s location of choice for its pan-European company Zurich Insurance plc (ZIP). Since the beginning of 2009, ZIP has been headquartered in Dublin and it is the main risk carrier for Zurich’s general insurance business in the EU. Neil Freshwater is the CEO of Zurich Insurance plc. In terms of domestic business, Zurich focuses on two key business areas in Ireland – General Insurance and Life. In Ireland, Zurich employs over 1,250 people.