Christian Hook (b. 1971) is a Gibraltar-born artist who has emerged over the past decade as one of the most significant portrait painters working in Britain today — an artist of considerable intellectual curiosity and formal ambition whose work has been recognised with institutional acquisitions, major awards, and the kind of critical attention that confirms rather than creates a reputation.
Named Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year in 2014, his rise since has been built on substance rather than momentum. His portraits are held in the collections of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, the Scottish National Gallery, the Museum of Liverpool, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bolton Museum. His celebrated sitters include Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, Sir Richard Branson, the Duchess of York, Sir Ian McKellen, and Dame Judi Dench. Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, selected Hook's portrait of actor Alan Cumming from over 100,000 works in the collection for his personal list of 100 masterpieces — alongside Rembrandt, Picasso, and Matisse. He has been granted the Freedom of the City of Gibraltar, one of the rarest civic distinctions available.
His practice is rooted in tradition but driven by sustained intellectual engagement with science, philosophy, and the history of ideas. His film project Painting the Invisible — produced with a team of Nobel Prize-winning scientists — was recognised as genuinely groundbreaking: an attempt to create a new kind of art rather than a new iteration of an existing one. His fractured, multi-layered portrait compositions find in the intersection of classical painting technique and contemporary scientific thinking a visual language that is, as has been observed, not merely recognisable but unmistakable.
His equestrian works — Grey Green and Cielo de Naranjos — and his Neon Electronica abstract series demonstrate a practice that extends well beyond portraiture. His official portrait of Robbie Williams is among the most personally connected works in the gallery's collection — Williams being also a collector of Lincoln Townley's Skull Banker series. Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
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