Jennifer McRae RSA

Jennifer McRae studied painting at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen from 1987-1992 and received a First Class Degree in Fine Art.

Over the years Jennifer has received numerous awards from the BP Portrait Award, the Hunting Art Prizes, the Singer Friedlander and Kaupthing Watercolour prizes, the Morrison Scottish Portrait award, the Worshipful Society of Painter Stainers, London and the Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitions. In 2008 she won First Prize Winner in the RWS Sunday Times Watercolour competition and Third Prize at the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize Exhibition held at Mall Galleries in February 2013. In May 2014, she won the Ondaatje Gold Medal, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London and, in 2015, was Artist in Residence at the Carnegie Club, Skibo Castle, Dornoch.

Jennifer creates work that combines reality with imagination, working from life while adhering to her own sense of detail and expression of design. This particular way of working in turn feeds her inspirations regarding her commissioned portraits, opening up contemporary possibilities to reflect the sitter’s world.

Jennifer’s can be found in many public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Reading Museum, Singer & Friedlander, Aberdeen Arts Gallery, Garrick Club, London, Lord’s MCC Museum, The Royal Society, London and The Royal Collection, Windsor. Her work is also included in private collections both in Europe and the US. Jennifer’s portrait commissions have included Dame Judi Dench and Sir Chris Hoy. In 2016, she completed her 3rd commission for the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, of Baroness Gail Rebuck, and even more recently, has had a self-portrait acquired by the Prestigious Ruth Borchard Collection. In 2017,  Jennifer was an invited selector for the international Columbia Threadneedle Art Prize.

Thackeray Gallery represented Jennifer McRae between 2007 and 2025 and now represents secondary market sales only.