Sahara Longe

Sahara Longe (b. 1994, London, United Kingdom) is a British figurative painter who lives and works in London. Longe trained for four years at the Florentine atelier Charles H. Cecil Studio, where she studied classical drawing and painting with an emphasis on creating portraits from live models. During this time, Longe learned traditional oil-paintings techniques used by the old masters, which she continues to employ in her work today. She is celebrated for her soft, flat-edged portraits that capture the essences of their sitters with minimal details.

Longe positions her subjects against semi-abstracted backgrounds, using rich swaths of carmine, chartreuse, and dove grey. Their quiet faces are barely delineated but recognizable by the tilt of a head or the bend of arms where hands are stuffed in pockets. As the artist has described, she was struck by a friend’s observation that one “can recognize someone you know just by the back of them, just by the way they stand and by the way they use their hands,” and her paintings in oil on linen tenderly capture these identifying gestures. Longe applied this sensitivity to her sitter as one of ten internationally acclaimed artists commissioned by His Majesty King Charles III to contribute portraits honouring pioneering members of Britain’s Windrush Generation. First unveiled in June 2023, her intimate portrait remained on view at the National Portrait Gallery until April 2024.