The best contemporary British painters under 40 include Jadé Fadojutimi, Rachel Jones, Issy Wood, Flora Yukhnovich, Joy Labinjo and Somaya Critchlow, with a younger wave led by Ella Walker, Sholto Blissett and Georg Wilson. Every artist below was born in 1990 or later, confirmed against a gallery biography or a cited reference, so all are under 40 as of October 2026. What links them is not a single style but a track record: museum acquisitions, institutional solo shows and sustained bodies of work rather than one viral canvas.
How this list was built
A list like this goes stale quickly, so the method matters more than the ranking. Each painter here meets three tests. First, a birth year published by a representing gallery or a referenced biography, which places them under 40 in October 2026. Second, at least one solo exhibition or commission at a public institution, or work held in a public collection. Third, a body of work that has developed over several years.
That process removed some familiar names. Two painters often grouped with this generation could not be confirmed as under 40 from a reliable source, so they are not included here. Age cut-offs are blunt instruments anyway: plenty of painters reach their best work in their forties and fifties. The Turner Prize, for instance, goes to “a British Artist”, which Tate defines as someone working primarily in Britain or born in Britain and working globally, according to Tate’s guide to the prize.
All facts below were checked in October 2026. Exhibition schedules change, so confirm dates with the venue before travelling.
Abstraction and colour
Jadé Fadojutimi (born 1993) has one of the strongest museum records of her generation. Her gallery biography at Pippy Houldsworth records a BA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2015 and an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2017, a first institutional solo show at PEER in London in 2019, and acquisitions by Tate, ICA Miami, the Walker Art Center, the Hepworth Wakefield, the Hammer Museum, LACMA and the Stedelijk Museum. She was included in the Hayward Gallery’s 2021 survey Mixing It Up: Painting Today and was selected for the 2022 Venice Biennale. Her Wikipedia entry adds representation by Galerie Gisela Capitain and, since 2022, Gagosian, and a place on the TIME100 Next list in October 2024. The canvases are large, layered and fast, and they reward a long look at the edges where colours collide.
Rachel Jones (born 1991) was born in Whitechapel and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. In September 2025 The Courtauld Gallery unveiled STRUCK, two site-specific works for its entrance and ticketing halls at Somerset House. The Courtauld’s announcement explains that she works in oil pastel and oil stick, often with motifs of mouths “representing points of entry and connection between the body and the outside world”, and that one of the new pieces drew on a still from Tom and Jerry (1947). It also lists recent solo shows at Chisenhale Gallery (2022), the Long Museum in Shanghai (2023) and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco (2024), plus Gated Canyons at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2025. Her Wikipedia entry notes that she designed the trophy statuettes for the 2024 BRIT Awards.
Figuration and the self
Issy Wood (born 1993) was born in the United States and lives in London. The CV on her Carlos/Ishikawa artist page lists a BA in Fine Art and History of Art from Goldsmiths (2015) and an MA from the Royal Academy Schools (2018). In 2026 she has a self-portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, after solo shows at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin (2025), TANK Shanghai (2024) and Lafayette Anticipations in Paris (2023). Her self-portraits are central to the work, and her Wikipedia entry notes a parallel music career, with EPs released from 2020. The gallery has published her daily small oil studies in four volumes of SML PTNGS, a useful entry point if large shows are out of reach.
Somaya Critchlow (born 1993) works in oil, ink, watercolour and pastel, often at very small scale: several oils listed by her gallery measure around 25 by 20 centimetres. Her Maximillian William profile lists The Chamber at Dulwich Picture Gallery (2025), a 2023 show at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, a 2024 exhibition curated by the critic Hilton Als, and Pastels at the gallery in 2026. Group shows include When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Kunstmuseum Basel (2025), and her work is held by the British Museum, LACMA, the Stedelijk Museum and the Arts Council Collection. These pictures are made for close viewing.
Joy Labinjo (born 1994) grew up in Dagenham and builds large figure paintings with flattened space from family photographs and archives. Her Wikipedia entry records a degree from Newcastle University in 2017, the 2017 Woon Art Prize (a £20,000 award with a 12-month residency), a solo exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in 2019 to 2020, and 5 More Minutes, a large public commission at Brixton Underground station that ran from November 2021. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge holds her painting An 18th-Century Family.
History painting revisited
Flora Yukhnovich (born 1990) is the oldest painter on this list and the clearest case of a young artist in dialogue with museum collections. Her Victoria Miro biography sets out the sequence: an MA at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2017, a first solo show that December, paintings that temporarily replaced two works by François Boucher on the staircase of the Wallace Collection in 2024, a place in the first round of Ashmolean NOW in Oxford (2023 to 2024), and a site-specific mural in the Frick Collection’s Cabinet in New York from September 2025 to March 2026. Her 2026 exhibition Egg, at Victoria Miro Venice, ran from 5 May to 4 July. The Rococo is her source, but the brushwork is loose and contemporary.
Ella Walker (born 1993) was born in Manchester. Her Pilar Corrias biography records a BA in Painting and Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art and a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Drawing School in 2018. She places predominantly female figures centre stage, drawing on medieval manuscripts, classical sculpture, ballet and the films of Fellini and Pasolini. Recent solo shows include The Romance of the Rose at Pilar Corrias (2024) and Chorus at Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover (2023).
The next wave under 30
Two painters born in the late 1990s already show the pattern of their elders.
Sholto Blissett (born 1996) came to painting by an unusual route: a geography degree from Durham University in 2017, then an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2020, according to his Pilar Corrias biography. His imagined scenery treats nature as a process rather than a backdrop. Orders of Magnitude opened at Pilar Corrias in 2026, after inclusion in the group show Alien Shores at White Cube in 2025.
Georg Wilson (born 1998) read art history at Oxford before an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2022. Her biography notes two Elizabeth Greenshields awards and shortlistings for the Ingram Prize (2022) and New Contemporaries (2023). She paints English countryside scenes, inspired by folklore and poetry, peopled by small wild creatures rather than humans. A solo show at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury is listed as forthcoming.
Where young painters are spotted first
Most of the artists above share a few stepping stones, and following those routes is the best way to find the next names before they reach the major galleries.
- Postgraduate schools. The Royal College of Art, the Royal Academy Schools, the Slade and the Royal Drawing School appear again and again in these biographies. Their end-of-year shows are a chance to see new work early; check each school’s website for dates.
- New Contemporaries. New Contemporaries, a registered charity (number 1013848), runs an open call, residencies and development programmes for early-career artists. Georg Wilson was shortlisted in 2023.
- Public galleries. Baltic in Gateshead, PEER and Chisenhale in east London gave early solo shows to Labinjo, Fadojutimi and Jones.
- Historic collections. The Wallace Collection, the Ashmolean, the Courtauld and Dulwich Picture Gallery now regularly invite living painters to respond to their holdings, which is where Yukhnovich, Jones and Critchlow found large new audiences.
How to look beyond the hype
Auction results and social media reach say little about whether a painting will hold up in twenty years. More useful signals are a gallery biography that lists public collections, a museum show chosen by curators rather than bought by sponsors, and a body of work that changes from one exhibition to the next.
If you are collecting, start with the free route: visit degree shows and public collections, read wall labels, and join gallery mailing lists. Ask a gallery about provenance, condition and edition details before committing, and budget for framing and insurance. Buy what you would happily live with if prices never rose. For broader context on how contemporary art is written about and valued, our sister titles Art Culture UK and Visionary Art cover exhibitions and criticism.
Keeping this list current
Creativity’s UK will revisit this list as new exhibitions are announced and as painters pass the age cut-off: Flora Yukhnovich, born in 1990, will be the first to age out. If you think a painter belongs here, the test is simple: a verifiable birth year after October 1986, a public exhibition or collection record, and work strong enough to survive a slow look in person.
Photo: Johann Christoph Erhard (1795 – 1822) Born in Nuremberg, Germany. Died in Rome, Italy. Details on Google Art Project, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
