Rose Wylie, 91 and still painting, brings her glorious irreverence to Royal Academy London

The biggest exhibition of artist Rose Wylie’s work to date opens on 28 February at London’s Royal Academy. Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First brings together some of her most enduring paintings, alongside new work. Wylie is known for her bright, bold canvases, which reference ancient history, popular culture and her own life. 

While Wylie was preparing for the exhibition last year, Monocle visited her studio in Kent to get a sneak peek at some of her paintings, as well as works in progress. Read on for Monocle’s profile of the sprightly Wylie and a behind-the-scenes look at her famous (and famously messy) studio. Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First is on at the Royal Academy from 28 February to 19 April.

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When a particularly big globule of paint falls off Rose Wylie’s brush, she’ll simply cover it with a sheet of newspaper to stop it getting on her shoes. “I’m not a precious worker,” she says as we stand in her studio. A soft layer of newspaper carpets the floor, paintbrushes stick out of cans stacked on chairs and colourful splatters obscure the skirting board. Wylie’s unruly garden has crept up the side of the house and into this first-floor room – a jasmine plant pushes through a window in one corner. “Mostly you’re criticised if you don’t tidy up,” she says. “But if you get through a certain threshold, it becomes iconic.”

Wylie’s artistic training went unused for years while she raised her family but, since returning to painting in her forties, she has become a critical and commercial darling of the art world. She is currently working on a painting that features a large, “nonchalant” skeleton. It will appear in her upcoming exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in early 2026, her biggest show to date.

Wylie’s bold canvases often combine text and figures from history, mythology or contemporary pop culture. And while Wylie’s process can be messy, she is exacting about her practice, regularly working late into the night wrestling with a painting. “Often it’s horrible, slimy, trite, pedestrian,” she says. “There are 100 things that can go wrong, particularly with faces, and then, for some odd reason, suddenly it’s alright.”

This article was originally published 15 October 2025 and was updated on 23 February 2026 to reflect Wylie’s show at the Royal Academy London.

Read more about well-aged artists

• The art of ageing: Inside the studios of seven in-demand artists in their eighties and nineties