Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 2025

There’s a new look to the Annual Exhibition of the ROI  – which is an
annual exhibition that features a variety of oil paintings by both established
and emerging artists, the majority of whom are members of the Royal Institute
of Oil Painters.

The theme of this year’s ROI Exhibition is “Home”

I visited last Wednesday for the PV and Awards Ceremony and then again on
Saturday afternoon to finish my photographs and it gradually dawned on me that
it felt and looked different – and then slowly I realised why that might be.

The Demographic Change

It took a while to work it out – and then I realised, almost all the “old
guard” who I’ve been seeing in the Annual Exhibitions for the last 20 years
have almost all gone. 

Of those still alive, relatively few are still painting and
exhibiting. 

It feels like the overall demographic of ROI members has really changed – so there are now many more younger artists and many more female artists.

• Older members have been replaced 
• by much younger artists who have done their bit as
  open artists and 
• who have now progressed to becoming members and 
• in turn, some of them are now officers of the
  ROI in their middle age. 

I’m now older than most of the people running the show – which feels very different for me too!

I remember well walking around
the ROI annual exhibition in 2010
with
Adebanji Alade PROI while we discussed how we could make even more of an impression
than he was already and become a member!

Last Wednesday, I saw him deliver the most electrifying tub thumping awards
ceremony I’ve seen in years – as President of the ROI. It feels like maybe the engine room has had an overhaul and there’s a new drive to reinforce and develop the ROI. 

While on the wall next to the cafe, very sadly, there’s a record of a number of the
stalwart member exhibitors of the past who have died in the last year. The last year we lost so many in one year was 2022. These included:

• Fred Beckett FROI
  (1933-2025) who was an ex President of the ROI and the Wapping Group; 
• John McCombs
  ROI (1943-2025) who never grew tired of painting the Pennine village of
  Delph and 
• Brian Ryder
  (1944-2025) –  whose landscapes I always looked forward to seeing and
  who never ever had a painting rejected by the ROI.  I found these “bon
  mots” on his website – which I’m sure some of you will value

1. Art is not what we see but what you can make others see.
2. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good
   things.
3. A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy.
   When you always make your meaning plain you end up boring people.
4. Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you
   do.”

So it felt a bit like you do on New Year’s Eve – it’s goodbye to the old guard
and hello to all the new much younger painters hoping to become members as
well as those who have been around a few years and are now running the show!

Interestingly most of those new artists are ones I first came across online. 

This is his video tour of the exhibition

The ROI Exhibition 2025

West Gallery

The basics

You can visit the exhibition at the Mall Galleries (10am – 5pm) until 13th December

You can view all the artworks on here.

You can see also photographs of the artwork on the walls of the exhibition on my Making A Mark Facebook Page. I try to show you the whole wall – and then the paintings on it.

I tend to photograph the paintings I like (and the Prizewinners) on their own.

Demonstrations are happening all this week. See details below

• Roger Dellar Tuesday 2 December 2:30pm to 4:30pm – I highly recommend!
• Tom Marsh Wednesday 3 December 11am to 1pm
• Karl Terry Wednesday 3 December 2pm to 4pm
• Max White Thursday 4 December 11am to 4pm
• Rob Pointon Monday 8 December 11am to 4pm
• Stewart Beckett Wednesday 10 December 2pm to 4pm
• Lucy Marks Friday 12 December 2pm to 4pm

What I noticed

Here are some of the things I noticed

The overall quality of painting is very good. There’s also much less predictable “same old same old“. As more younger and female painters join the ROI the nature of the subject matter is changing – but not the standards. In fact I’d go so far as to say this exhibition has a more eclectic range of subject matter with an overall standard of painting which is very good. It’s well worth a visit.

Many of the member artists have most of their paintings hung in a vertical group in the West Gallery

I noticed many more smaller paintings being hung. This is within the context of a total of 321 paintings hung in the exhibition – 

• this is more than usual. However artists have tended to sell more smaller paintings in recent times due to economic contraints – and this makes perfect sense to me. 
• However because there are more smaller and more affordable paintings, the exhibition does not look crowded. 

There’s a women’s wall. I’m not sure whether this was planned. All I know is there’s a lot of women artists all hanging out together on the very long Mall wall of the West Gallery!

Haidee-Jo Summers VPROI with two of her paintings  with (left) Emma Perring – an exhibitor at the show and the owner of the shoes on the window ledge in Haidee Jo’s “Kitchen Window at Corner Cottage”

The exhibition had an overall theme of Home which was mainly located on the end wall of the West Gallery – around a big teapot. I thought the different interpretations were really interesting.

The Home Theme on the end wall of the West Gallery

The standout painting for me on this wall was a very bright one painted many years ago by Adebanji Alade of him and his two kids all working on tgeir art together.

Adebanji Alade – portrait of the family making art at home – from some years ago. It’s an allegory for the benefits of showing not telling. His son at the table is now on a degree course about art and his daughter – painting on the floor is now doing a Fine Art A Level

There’s a lot of plein air painters. There are also so many paintings of Venice I think a few of them have been on an organised plein air paintout in Venice!

There are also those who paint urban landscapes here in London. Below was a very unique and standout offering of two plein aire paintings of the same view by a woman artist – one in 2013 and the other done earlier this year

Two panoramic London skylines (top in 2025; botton in 2013) by  Alice Hall ROI  (they really need to be bought together!)

Rob Pointon ROI has started painting a rather different landscape after a visit to San Francisco and exposure to the vertical landscapes of Wayne Thiebaud.  Here he is (below) with his paintings of the back streets of  Staffordshire towns. Rob graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art from Aberystwyth University before going on to study at The Royal Drawing School in London and become a full time artist in 2006. He was elected to the ROI in 2019.

He won The Le Clerc Fowle Medal at this year’s ROI exhibition for an outstanding group of paintings

Rob Pointon with precipitous streets in Stoke

It’s well worthwhile studying the Winsor & Newton Young Artist wall in the East Gallery – where the recipients of the Young Artist awards sponsored by W&N can be seen. If you look at the list of past winners, you can see the names of several artists who now have very successful full time careers as artists

The Winsor and Newton Young Artist Awards

Do not miss the North Gallery. it Includes some excellent paintings. My favourites were 

Three paintings of the canal towpath in Basingstoke – and Luis Morris ROI

• the three landscapes by Luis Morris ROI in the far room which are both a delightful surprise and very affordable. I want to see him doing more of these in future! (Luis lays claim to having had the most unusual occupation prior to becoming an artist – he was a banknote designer!)
• The portrait of Peter, the owner of the art shop in Penzance in Cornwall by open artist and Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2923 Wendy Barratt which won her the £4,000 Roger Remington Award for an outstanding painting. Peter Fox is about to retire after 36 years of running the art supplies shop – and is looking for a new owner

Peter by Wendy Barratt Oil on canvas 90x60cm (94x64cm framed) in yet another low profile slim white frame

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Observations on Framing and Pricing

This is more about the business and profitability end from the artists perspective – within the current market context.

Framing

More contemporary, more minimal framing in the East Gallery

Those exhibiting in this exhibition must remember that people can like a painting and dislike a frame. For many people that’s enough to deter them from buying. 

• I know I won’t buy a painting if I know I’m going to have to get it reframed.  It also puts me off the artist if they don’t know what a good contemporary frame looks like.
• I want to see a nice neutral frame which will go with all the rest of my nice neutral frames!

Ten years ago I wrote Do frames help to sell art? and The reasons why frames for art change over time. They were both written after my visit to the ROI Annual Exhibition in 2015 – after which one prominent male oil painter subsequently changed his frames

In my opinion, there are till far too many overly moulded and chunky / heavy frames surrounding artworks – which are really not suitable for many homes which have contemporary decor. These heavily molded frames reminded me very much of the sort of frames we used to see years ago – but not so much these days. Somebody really ought to find out what sort of frames people like!  Plus maybe have a think whether any of their existing frames could be revived by a coat of lighter more neutral paint.

I remember looking around at the frames and the prices following a discussion
with one artist when I opined that I thought his work might sell better in
different frames.

I was particularly struck how those paintings hung with minimal frames are
both looking good, contemporary and are selling well. I might go back near
the end to do an analysis of “frames which sold”

Below are two larger works by two women artists – both have sold.

Two larger more expensive paintings – in narrow white frames – have BOTH SOLD (Left: Night Owl by Frances Featherstone (oil on linen 95x85cm framed SOLD (£8,600) (Right) Allotment Cosmos by Anne-Marie Butlin (oil on line 86 x 86cm framed SOLD (£3,200)

There are lots of apps these days where you can picture your artwork in different frames and check out what makes it look good.

I’ll be writing more about this on a post about frames generally.

Pricing and Sales

Bottom line, this exhibition as others before and after December 2025 are still operating in a context of economic uncertainty. This means 

• fewer people buying art
• more people deterred by small aspects – like frames
• more people interested in staying at the affordable end of the market.

As of the countup of sales I did before starting this post, the ROI has sold 70 of
the 321 paintings hung in the show (ie 21%). I think some people have been reading my
posts or have listened to what I have had to say on prices because I spotted
some shifts in prices.

I’ve had an update since first posting this – and I understand sales have now topped £115,000 and they’re hoping for a record-breaking year. 

Interestingly – and I’ve noticed this in some other exhibitions:

• 
  the open artists are very much keeping pace with the members on
  sales 
  
• there are twice as many sales below £1,500 compared to above this critical price point
• open artists dominate sales below £750
• the ROI members dominate and are very solid in the £1,500-2000 price band.
• the three most expensive artworks sold (over £5K) are by open artists – who are not new to oil painting and an AROI. So again, new blood has a chance to shine!
• Overall the profile of sales has a bulge at the top and bottom
  of the prices art has sold for 

REFERENCE: Past Exhibitions of the ROI

You can find links to my previous reviews of exhibitions below. Not sure what happened last year – I seem to have missed writing my review.