The Collection

Anthony Palliser is a painter internationally recognized for his portraits and large-scale paintings of heads. Born to an English father and Belgian mother, and grandson of Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, Palliser was educated at Downside School, graduated from New College, Oxford, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1967. He settled in Paris in 1970, where he continues to live and work. From 1995 to 1997, he served as Visiting Professor at the New York School of Visual Arts in Savannah, Georgia, a region whose low-country landscapes remain a lasting source of inspiration.

Over his career, Palliser has held more than two dozen solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows in Europe and the United States. His portraits include figures from literature, politics, film, and the arts: Graham Greene (National Portrait Gallery, London), Paddy Ashdown (House of Commons, London), Sir Michael Howard (King’s College London), Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, James Ivory, John Boorman, Kenzo Takada, Kristin Scott Thomas, Charlotte Rampling, Marianne Faithfull, and Pierce Brosnan, among others.

In recent decades, Palliser has focused on his acclaimed Large Heads series, monumental canvases painted from life that blur the boundaries between portraiture and pure painting. A book of his collected works was published by Éditions du Regard (2005), accompanied by an exhibition at the Ricard Foundation, Paris. Subsequent solo shows include the Jepson Center for the Arts, Telfair Museums, Savannah (2008–09), and Elephant Paname, Paris (2012).