Overview
- Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First is on view in the Royal Academy’s main galleries in London through 19 April 2026.
- The exhibition gathers about 90 works, mostly from the past 25 years, mixing Blitz memories with films, football, pets and everyday objects.
- Wylie’s large, deliberately naive paintings use bright colour, spare compositions and handwritten words, numbers and diagram-like marks.
- After pausing her practice to raise three children, she returned to focused study at the Royal College of Art in 1979, later gaining wider recognition from 2010, becoming a Royal Academician around 80 and receiving an OBE in 2018.
- Critical views this week span glowing notices and sharp skepticism, with several reviews also setting the show against Catherine Opie’s concurrent National Portrait Gallery retrospective running into May.