From Saturday 28 February to Sunday 19 April 2026, the Royal Academy of Arts presents Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First, the largest survey to date of the celebrated British artist and Royal Academician. Bringing together more than 90 works, the exhibition spans paintings and works on paper from across Wylie’s oeuvre, combining iconic pieces with new and previously unseen works.

A painter driven by images rather than hierarchy or narrative, Wylie draws from an expansive range of sources: art history and ancient civilisations, cinema and celebrity culture, newspapers, the internet and the minutiae of everyday life.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, beginning with early memories of family life and the Second World War. Wylie’s recollections of the Blitz, experienced as a young girl, surface in works such as Rosemount (Coloured) (1999) and Wing Tips and Blue Doodlebugs (2022/23), where personal history is rendered with a blend of candour, humour and emotional charge.

Drawing is central to Wylie’s practice and features prominently throughout the exhibition. She draws daily, building an extensive mental archive of images. As articulated in Hand: Drawing as Central (2022), drawing is not preparatory but fundamental. Motifs often reappear years later in paintings, stripped to their essentials and set alongside unexpected text or graphic elements.

Cinema forms another key strand. Paintings from Wylie’s Film Notes series reveal her fascination with the camera’s shifting perspectives, close-ups, long shots and fragmented views that lodge in memory. Works such as Kill Bill (Film Notes) (2007) and Natural Born Killers, Long-shot (Film Notes) (2018) translate cinematic recall into paint, where drama and incidental detail coexist on the same surface.

Alongside global references, Wylie’s immediate surroundings remain a vital source of inspiration: her object-filled home, her garden and her cat Pete, shared meals and conversations with friends. These everyday moments function as a visual diary, continually feeding her practice.

The exhibition concludes with four monumental monochrome animal paintings in ginger, black, blue and red. Made by applying paint directly with her hands, these works emphasise process and physicality. Thick layers of paint give the images a visceral presence, where transformation through making takes precedence over representation.

Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First continues the Royal Academy’s tradition of celebrating its Royal Academicians, following exhibitions devoted to artists such as Marina Abramović, Antony Gormley and David Hockney (who will be the subject of an exhibition at Serpentine from March 2026).

Image: Rose Wylie, A Handsome Couple, 2022, Oil on canvas, 174.5 × 183.5 cm, Courtesy Edwin Oostmeijer, © Rose Wylie. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Photo: Jack Hems