Howard J Morgan

Howard J. Morgan has been a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters since 1986. His work in this field is exceptional and reflected in numerous Royal commissions. These include HM The Queen, HM The Queen of The Netherlands and HRH Prince Michael of Kent. A particularly striking portrait of Dame Antoinette Sibley is another notable commission which, with several others, is on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery.

In addition to portraits, Howard J. Morgan also paints landscapes, religious pictures and murals — but his renown will ultimately rest in his conversation pictures which are often profoundly disturbing and tantalizingly indecipherable; demanding but with an underlying humour. He is often compared to Sargent, but a truer comparison would lie with Annibale Carracci, whose stylistic freedom of movement and impasto technique captured the imagination of post Renaissance Roman patrons.

In 1990, the Richmond Gallery devoted an opening night to just one painting: ‘La Soirée du Comte Frederique de la Chasseur’ Numerous other exhibitions have been held at galleries including Anthony Mould, Claridges, Agnew’ s, Cadogan Contemporary Watercolours and The Eaton Gallery.

William Packer arguably our most respected art critic

“…as a painter, he is nothing if not brave. To take on first the portrait on the grand scale, and then the full-blown conversation piece is to set oneself not merely against the standards of one’s contemporaries, but against the masters in the great tradition.

Portraits

Water Colours

Oil Landscapes

Elizabeth ll.’ In Their Own Words. PBS. An interview

INDEPENDENT

Most painters, if commissioned by a descendant of the Duke of Wellington to depict the Battle of Waterloo, would feature the Iron Duke somewhere fairly prominently. But not Howard Morgan.
The society portrait artist – known for his paintings of the Queen and the Queen Mother, with numerous pictures in the National Portrait Gallery – decided to downplay Wellington, focusing instead on the soldiers and the carnage of battle.

Morgan was commissioned by Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Douro, the son of the current duke, to paint a large canvas of the moment the setting sun broke through the clouds shortly before the allied victory.

DAILY MAIL

He was there to paint the Queen Mother — but first, Howard Morgan, whose portraits hang in some of the most fashionable drawing rooms in Britain, had to navigate his way through the thicket of corgis snapping at his heels.

There was little time to make friends with them. Turning from his canvas to the royal subject in front of him, his foot collided with one of the dogs in its midriff and — to his horror — it rose in the air before crumpling in a heap.

MSCASTRORIDES

Meeting renowned portrait painter Howard J Morgan was a pleasure and an honour. His stunning and unique works grace the walls esteemed galleries and high-society collections in all four corners of the globe. Perhaps most famous as a Royal portrait painter who has painted three Queen’s in his lifetime, Morgan also paints fabulous and glittering party scenes which I love, and I also recently discovered his shoe portraiture series which is completely fascinating.

Inside Chelsea

Program Information

Painting of Marlborough’s march to the Danube in 1704

Howard J. Morgan has been a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters since 1986. His work in this field is exceptional and reflected in numerous Royal commissions. These include HM The Queen, HM The Queen of The Netherlands and HRH Prince Michael of Kent. A particularly striking portrait of Dame Antoinette Sibley is another notable commission which, with several others, is on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery.