The nadir of this was the series 10 winner, who did a painting of Sir Lenny Henry. You can see it here. It looks very little like him. When he was shown it, you could see he was struggling to say positive things about it. If you had to guess who it was depicting without knowing who it was supposed to be depicting, well there aren't that many well-known older male Afro-Caribbean entertainers in the UK so you might have got it right, but it doesn't exactly capture his appearance. Worse, it was to be hung in the most prestigious gallery in the UK, the National Portrait Gallery.
I believe the judges may have been ticked off about this and told to get their act together for series 11. The subject of the commission this time round was Dame Jane Goodall, who is a very private person — the TV show was lucky to be able to persuade her to sit for it. The result was also to go in the National Gallery, so there was a lot riding on it. Fortunately, the winner was thoroughly deserved and the end portrait could easily be used to pick Dame Jane out of a line-up of similar elderly ladies with their hair tied back.
I was in the National Prtrait gallery for half an hour a couple of weeks ago and sought out the painting. Here's my photo of it:
When the TV show filmed its being hung, the portrait of Sir Lenny Henry was hanging on the same wall, high up. When I took my photograph, the Sir Lenny Henry portrait was nowhere to be seen.
Let's hope that standards are maintained for series 13.
You are now free to tell me that the Sir Lenny Henry portrait is a work of genius and the fact I know nothing about art, only about what people look like, has clouded my judgement.