Jenny Saville’s Figure Paintings At The Modern In Fort Worth | Seen at Large with Chadd Scott
Installation view of 'Fulcrum' (left) during 'Jenny Saville The Anatomy of Painting' at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Photo by Chadd Scott
This article was originally published in Forbes.
“Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting” because Saville (b. 1970; Cambridge, England) has taken figure painting–anatomy, the body, flesh–where it has never gone before. She began doing so as a 21-year-old.
“The Anatomy of Painting” because Saville thinks of her paintings in anatomical terms. Built. Parts coming together forming a whole.
“The Anatomy of Painting” because “Bangerz” was already taken.
Saville’s mid-career retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth features one banger of a painting after another. All hits. Turn it up.
Audacious in conceit, masterful in execution, monumental in scale, bracing in visual impact, each of Saville’s paintings declare her a worthy peer in the esteemed lineage of historic figure painting she so deeply reveres. Rembrandt to Francis Bacon. Diego Velasquez to Willem de Koonig. Saville makes another link in their chain.
Saville has taken the most worked over subject in art history–the human figure–and made it her own. Made it fresh. Unique. Challenged audiences and artists to think about the body in new ways. She paints like no one before, and no one paints like her or ever will.
A Jenny Saville painting declares itself as such.
Bold. Decisive. Incisive.
From London To Forth Worth
London’s National Portrait Gallery organized and debuted “The Anatomy of Painting.” That makes sense. One of Britain’s greatest painters at one of Britain’s greatest museums.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas serving as the only U.S. venue for the show–the only other venue anywhere for the show–requires explanation.
The Modern’s relationship with Saville goes back to its 2022 exhibition, “Women Painting Women.” Saville’s Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face) (1994) was a crowd favorite.
“During that show, people were responding so much to her work,” Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Chief Curator Andrea Karnes said at a press preview for “The Anatomy of Painting” held October 9, 2025. “Almost every time I went into the gallery, (Saville’s painting) had people in front of it literally crying, talking about it, relating to it.”
The reaction motivated Karnes to contact Saville’s gallery in the hopes of connecting with the artist. Karnes eventually visited Saville in Oxford, England. When Karnes learned the National Portrait Gallery was organizing a Saville retrospective, her relationship building efforts intensified.
Karnes agreed to write about Saville’s interest in Willem de Kooning for the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition catalog. De Kooning (1904-1997) was a major influence on Saville and she felt UK audiences didn’t know him well enough.
“Flesh was the reason why oil paint was invented,” de Kooning said.
In a gallery adjacent to “The Anatomy of Painting,” The Modern presents a selection of masterpieces from its permanent collection by artists, like de Kooning, who influenced Saville. Pollock, Picasso, and a harrowing, self-loathing, 1956 Francis Bacon self-portrait, surely one of the greatest paintings by a British artist in any American collection.
“I believe we’re the finest museum of modern and contemporary art in the U.S., so to me, it makes perfect sense,” Halona Norton-Westbrook, Director of The Modern, told Forbes.com about the institution’s selection as the sole host venue outside the National Portrait Gallery for Saville’s show.
Norton-Westbrook’s lofty appraisal is not unfounded.
Fort Worth doesn’t spring to mind when thinking of America’s great cultural capitals, but among people in the museum field, it’s three crown jewel art institutions–The Modern, The Kimbell Art Museum across the street, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art across the street from it–are widely recognized as a museum murderer’s row. Big oil money has built great art museums and bought great art work for Fort Worth.
Saville was familiar with The Modern, not only because her work had been on view in “Women Painting Women,” but also due to its global reputation. She made her first visit in 2023.
“She also visited the Kimbell and became extremely excited about being in dialogue with the Old Masters there,” Karnes told Forbes.com. “The Kimbell was a surprise to her.”
The Kimbell Art Museum’s focus is on antiquities and European painting through the 19th century. Exactly the sort of work Saville channels. It possesses Caravaggio’s The Cardsharps (1596-97) and Michelangelo’s first known painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony (1487), produced at 12 or 13-years-old. How about that?!
“And then this building ignited her,” Karnes added.
The Modern’s 2002 Tadao Ando building is as much a masterpiece as anything contained within. Minimalist. Geometric. Austere. Concrete and glass and water and light. Soaring ceilings. Timeless and contemporary.
The Kimbell’s adjacent 1972 Louis I. Kahn building matches it for architectural reverence.
Saville delighted in thinking about how The Modern’s larger spaces would allow for artworks of hers residing in the US, but too large for display in the National Portrait Gallery’s historic building, to be put on view.
“Perfect,” Saville told Forbes.com when asked how The Modern’s gallery spaces augment her paintings. “Because I put a lot into each painting, you can't have another painting very close. You need to have space around them. (The Modern) offers these viewing situations where you can be far away and then encounter the painting slowly.”
The exhibition has been installed throughout the museum’s massive second floor gallery spaces with viewing vistas in mind. They’re breathtaking.
From one spot in a main gallery, Bleach (2008) can be viewed to the left at 9 o’clock, Reverse (2002-2003) at 10 o’clock, Fulcrum (1998-99) through a portal at 11 o’clock, Suspension (2002-03), to the right at 1 o’clock–one of Saville’s few non-human paintings–and Rosetta II (2005-06) to the right at 3 o’clock. All gigantic paintings. All visible standing in one place thanks to The Modern’s cavernous special exhibition galleries and their sight lines. Painting in the round. Recalling a chapel where artworks fill every niche and wall and are all visible simultaneously from the pews.
Fulcrum and Suspension were too big to display at the National Portrait Gallery.
“Everyone knows the building and there's a precedent of great shows here. You hear about that. Once I'd walked around the building, I thought that it would be a great place to share my work,” Saville said. “This has been the best my work has looked. That’s a wonderful thing to be able to show big bodies of work here, the way that it was intended to be shown when I made it; that's been very pleasing.”
The exhibition includes some 50 paintings. Here are insights from the artist into four.
Propped (1992)
Like Earvin “Magic” Johnson winning the National Basketball Association Finals Most Valuable Player award as a rookie, Jenny Saville’s career started at the top. Immediately, she established herself as a force.
Her graduate show from the Glasgow School of Art proved sensational. Saville and her painting Propped (1992) were featured on the cover of London’s Times Saturday Review. The painting was among many of hers almost immediately acquired by Britain’s preeminent collector of contemporary art at the time, Charles Saatchi. He financed her to produce work for her first show as a professional artist and the rocket ride began.
Propped welcomes visitors to the exhibition galleries at The Modern.
Installation view of 'Propped' during 'Jenny Saville The Anatomy of Painting' at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Looking back, is the artist surprised she was able to create a lasting masterpiece, a legacy artwork, at 21-years-old?
“Not really,” Saville said. “That sounds arrogant, doesn't it?”
Arrogant or not, like Magic, Saville would go on to prove Propped was no fluke.
“I was very purposeful by then,” Saville explained. “I have a natural instinct for painting flesh. I don't find it too difficult to do.”
How can that be?
“Some people are good at painting nature, whether it's a still life or a body, and I just had a feel for that. I have a feel for making paintings that look like other people,” Saville said. “I can find out how that person looks. I can see it through my eyes and articulate that in paint. I don't find it that difficult to do, to make a knee come out.”
Saville believes her strongest skill as a painter lies in composition.
“Compositionally, (Propped is) really strong. I still think that single figure on top of the stool–all the elements came together at the right time,” she said. “I didn't have a concept that it would become an iconic work.”
Saville used herself as the model for Propped. It’s not a self-portrait, she borrowed parts. The world had seen nothing like it.
The literal and figurative weight of the body. The paint handling. The bald head. The fingers dug into the thighs.
The backwards text across the picture is a quote from French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray.
“A lot of people, just by this work alone, misunderstand Jenny’s work to be aggressive or staunch feminism,” Karnes explained. “She believes in feminisms, but her work is about the empowerment of people as much as it is about painting flesh.”
Empowering people who, for one physical reason or another, society places outside the norm. People used to being stared at because of their differences.
Fulcrum (1998-99)
Despite working in large scale, Saville had not approached anything of the scale of Fulcrum before taking it on. There’s big–Propped is more than 7-feet-tall–then there’s Fulcrum big: 16-feet across. The painting dwarfs the petite artist who stands little over 5-feet.
“That was a challenge to work on such a large scale and get the figures to have the sense of realism that I wanted,” Saville said. “I wouldn't say it was hard. I used to call it ‘the bitch,’ mostly because it's a big, big painting and I was working in a studio that was kind of cold, and it was like a job going through it, but I was really pleased. That was my first New York show and I had an ambition to make something big.”
As with her knack for painting people and flesh, Saville has always had a knack for scale.
Installation view of 'Fulcrum' (left) during 'Jenny Saville The Anatomy of Painting' at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
“I have a natural feeling for scale. I always have,” she said. “I love working on a large scale. I'm enthusiastic about it. I feel really excited about the possibility of what that journey is going to entail.”
Fulcrum features the same figure painted three times. Ask the artist if she ever tires of painting figures almost exclusively and she’ll tell you paintings like Fulcrum are landscapes of a sort.
“There's a landscape element in the bodies that are piled up; there's a kind of landscape element to the colors that I've used,” Saville explains. “I hope that my work hints towards the history of painting in general.”
Blue Pieta (2018)
When presented an opportunity to paint in Florence alongside artworks by Michelangelo and Da Vinci, Saville challenged herself to rise to the occasion; like all the greats, she did, creating a pietà for the 21st century, eschewing the Madonna and replacing her with a man.
Blue Pieta, obviously, owes to Michelangelo’s pietà sculpture.
“She realized the genius of Michelangelo in that every way you can move around the sculpture, you see that he’s putting emotion into every curve,” Karnes explained. “She realized that studying him closely for so long before she began to make these works. Her works, too, have this ability to have a physicality and an emotional resonance. She sharpened that in Florence.”
Jenny Saville's 'Blue Pieta' installed at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Saville’s subjects include sitters she knows well, others she doesn’t, and found imagery, as was the case with Blue Pieta.
“I did see recurring images of when you had earthquakes or bombings or wartime, you had a lot of men carrying children out of disaster scenarios, whether it was emergency services or parents, and I found that was really poetic,” Saville said. “I was collecting some ideas for a Pieta, a contemporary kind of war picture, and I started to see the recurrence of that. I thought it was a very interesting phenomena that's not really been represented.”
Represented endlessly in the news, never in art.
Rosetta II (2005-06)
Behold one of the greatest paintings of the 21st century.
“Rosetta II is one of Jenny’s works where she gave herself permission to just make something beautiful,” Karnes said.
Mission accomplished.
It’s a Madonna. It’s an altarpiece. It’s spiritual. It’s secular. It’s painting taken to its highest capacity.
The model is a blind woman Saville met in Italy.
“She wanted to elevate this woman,” Karnes explained. “There is a mystique about this woman. She wanted to empower this woman.”
A woman used to being stared at.
The Modern’s installation provides numerous arresting views of her.
From far away, “You feel the angelic nature of the head coming out from the drips at the bottom,” Saville said. “Then as you get closer, the paint itself starts to take over. That's what working on a large scale (allows), the physical movement of the paint becomes another language that you can delve into.”
Get right up close.
Jenny Saville, 'Rosetta II,' 2005–06 Oil on watercolour paper, mounted on board 99.25 x 73.875 inches. Copyright Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
“When you're this close–this here is like a section of abstract painting, and I like the possibility of that that larger scale offers,” Saville said, referring to the sitter’s exposed neck.
In each of Saville’s large-scale figurative masterpieces, smaller abstract masterpieces are found. The anatomy of painting.
“I work in sections,” she explained. “On this painting, it's got a warm, black, tonal wash underneath, and then I started to build the flesh up after that. The neck was painted as one section, for example, the side of the shoulder was painted as one. I tend to work like that. I'll do a session making that section of the painting. Each section has a kind of freshness. You can't paint the whole of that all at the same time and have a level of craft that I want.”
“Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting” opened at The Modern October 12, 2025, and runs through January 18, 2026. Museum admission is free on Fridays.
“It's amazing to see it actually. There's a lot of hours in here,” Saville said. “You're very emotionally involved in each piece. I can go to bed thinking about it, and wake up thinking about it, and you carry on, and you do that until it's finished, and then it leaves. Then you go on to the next painting, and you do the same thing, and this is a collection of all those moments when you see all the work together.”
About Chadd Scott
A midlife career crisis at 40 led Chadd Scott to begin writing about art with no background in it following a 20 year career in the sports media. Learning "Art History 101" from YouTube videos, used books, and podcasts, Scott found the more he looked, the more he liked. He now freelances for Forbes.com, Western Art Collector magazine, Native American Art magazine, and Fodors.com among other publications while operating his own website, www.seegreatart.art, a daily look at art exhibitions and events across the United States. Scott's particular interests in the art world are Native American, African American, and female artists and how art intersects with social justice. As he likes to say, "a people's history is best learned through their artwork." Scott especially enjoys traveling to off-the-beaten-path arts destinations across America. His favorite artist is Earl Biss. His favorite arts destination is Santa Fe, NM. Scott lives in Fernandina Beach, FL.