The Mr Heatherley Composition Prize is an annual summer project and competition for second year Portrait Diploma students, offering one of their first opportunities to work with complete creative independence.

Following a year of intensive study, students are challenged to conceive and create an ambitious painting featuring at least three figures, making all the key decisions themselves: from the subject, composition and arrangement of the sitters to the painting’s visual language, execution and presentation. Without input from tutors or lecturers, the project asks students to take ownership of their ideas and develop the independent aesthetic judgement essential to professional practice as a portrait artist.

The practical and imaginative challenges are considerable. Students must find their own solutions to the complexities of bringing several figures together in a single composition, including working with sitters who may not be able to pose at the same time.

The resulting exhibition offers an exciting insight into the individual voices emerging from the Diploma, as students pursue their own ideas, interests and visual language.

The work is judged by a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, which generously sponsors the prize. 

Marlies Forster, winner of Mr Heatherley 2025