Flying mermaids and moonlit dancers – Paula Rego: a life in pictures

The internationally acclaimed Portuguese-British artist has died aged 87. Here we look back on her extraordinary career and body of work

Main image: New model army … Paula Rego in her studio in London, 2015. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/the Observer

  • A portrait of Paula Rego in 2021 by her son Nick Willing, who has talked about feeling excluded by his mother’s passion for art. Rego let him into her life for a brutally honest BBC film about the depression that almost killed her – and the self-portraits she made to survive
    A portrait of Paula Rego in 2021 by her son Nick Willing, who has talked about feeling excluded by his mother’s passion for art. Rego let him into her life for a brutally honest BBC film about the depression that almost killed her – and the self-portraits she made to survive

  • Paula Rego with her father José Figueiroa Rego and mother Maria De São José, 1938
    Paula Rego with her father José Figueiroa Rego and mother Maria De São José, 1938

  • Paula with her son Nick Willing in Estoril, Portugal, 1961
    Paula with her son Nick Willing in Estoril, Portugal, 1961

  • Paula Rego in front of Dogs of Barcelona, 1965
    Paula Rego in front of Dogs of Barcelona, 1965

  • Victor Willing, Paula Rego and Nick Willing at their home in Ericeira, Portugal, 1970
    Victor Willing, Paula Rego and Nick Willing at their home in Ericeira, Portugal, 1970

  • Family portrait, Ericeira, Portugal, 1969, l to r: Nick Willing, Paula Rego, Vicky, Cas and Victor
    Family portrait, Ericeira, Portugal, 1969, l to r: Nick Willing, Paula Rego, Vicky, Cas and Victor

  • The Dance, 1988, is a large painting featuring eight figures dancing on a beach in the moonlight. The scale of the work seems out of kilter, with the solitary woman seeming larger. At the time, this was the largest painting Rego had created, and it was completed in London, where Rego moved permanently in 1976
    The Dance, 1988, is a large painting featuring eight figures dancing on a beach in the moonlight. The scale of the work seems out of kilter, with the solitary woman seeming larger. At the time, this was the largest painting Rego had created, and it was completed in London, where Rego moved permanently in 1976

  • Rego on ITV’s South Bank Show in 1987, six years after her first London show, at the Air gallery. This was the year she painted one of her most famous works, The Policeman’s Daughter, in which a scowling young woman cleans her father’s jackboot with one hand with the other arm shoved up inside it.
    Rego on ITV’s South Bank Show in 1987, six years after her first London show, at the AIR gallery. This was the year she painted one of her most famous works, The Policeman’s Daughter, in which a scowling young woman cleans her father’s jackboot with one hand with the other arm shoved up inside it.

  • The artist shot by Observer photographer Jane Bown in 1995. By this time, Rego was working in pastel, which combines the swiftness of drawing with the completeness of painting
    The artist shot by Observer photographer Jane Bown in 1995. By this time, Rego was working in pastel, which combines the swiftness of drawing with the completeness of painting

  • Dog Woman, 1994, was inspired by a story a friend wrote for her. Rego drew this in pastels, echoing the physicality of Degas’ drawings. ‘To be a dog woman is not necessarily to be downtrodden,’ said Rego. ‘That has very little to do with it. In these pictures every woman’s a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It’s physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive. To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable’
    Dog Woman, 1994, was inspired by a story a friend wrote for her. Rego drew this in pastels, echoing the physicality of Degas’ drawings. ‘To be a dog woman is not necessarily to be downtrodden,’ said Rego. ‘That has very little to do with it. In these pictures every woman’s a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It’s physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive. To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable’

  • Rego wearing a faux-fur coat during the opening of her show at the Marlborough gallery in New York in 1996
    Rego wearing a faux-fur coat during the opening of her show at the Marlborough gallery in New York in 1996

  • Untitled No 1, 1998 from the Abortion series. The artist blazed into Portugal’s 1998 abortion referendum with powerful images of women in backstreet clinics
    Untitled No 1, 1998 from the Abortion seriesThe artist blazed into Portugal’s 1998 abortion referendum with powerful images of women in backstreet clinics

  • With her triptych The Pillowman in 2004. The work is an interpretation of the play by Martin McDonagh about Katurian, a writer living in a police state whose stories echo some bizarre child murders occurring in his town. Rego said the work ‘captured what I identified with in Martin McDonagh’s play’
    With her triptych The Pillowman in 2004. The work is an interpretation of the play by Martin McDonagh about Katurian, a writer living in a police state whose stories echo some bizarre child murders occurring in his town. Rego said the work “captured what I identified with in Martin McDonagh’s play”.

  • Rego in her London studio, with her work Oratorio, 2009. The Foundling Museum, which preserves the memory of the abandoned children helped by the Foundling Hospital, asked Paula Rego to produced some works. This exhibition set up a dialogue between Paula Rego, Mat Collishaw and Tracey Emin, offering their reflections on children passing through this institution
    Rego in her London studio, with her work Oratorio, 2009. The Foundling Museum, which preserves the memory of the abandoned children helped by the Foundling Hospital, asked Paula Rego to produced some works. This exhibition set up a dialogue between Paula Rego, Mat Collishaw and Tracey Emin, offering their reflections on children passing through this institution

  • Photographed by Eamonn McCabe in 2015. ‘Paula Rego was a fearless artist who painted life and the world head-on,’ her gallery Victoria Miro said today in a statement. ‘A remarkable, dazzling, and powerful force for good and for change. We have lost a very great artist’
    Photographed by Eamonn McCabe in 2015. ‘Paula Rego was a fearless artist who painted life and the world head-on,’ her gallery Victoria Miro said today in a statement. ‘A remarkable, dazzling, and powerful force for good and for change. We have lost a very great artist.’

  • At her studio in London, 2015. In an interview with the Observer at the time, she said: ‘I had a teacher, Dona Violetta, who was particularly unkind, critical and authoritarian. Once, she put a cup and saucer in front of me and said: “Draw that.” I tried. She said it was really bad. I was eight. She said: “You want to be an artist and you can’t even draw a cup and saucer.” She appears in my work as a grotesque – whenever I need a really bad woman. Painting is a way of exacting revenge – gentle or violent’
    At her studio in London, 2015. In an interview with the Observer at the time, she said: ‘I had a teacher, Dona Violetta, who was particularly unkind, critical and authoritarian. Once, she put a cup and saucer in front of me and said: “Draw that.” I tried. She said it was really bad. I was eight. She said: “You want to be an artist and you can’t even draw a cup and saucer.” She appears in my work as a grotesque – whenever I need a really bad woman. Painting is a way of exacting revenge – gentle or violent.’

  • Paula Rego at 80. In her studio in London, 2015. In the same interview, she told the Observer: ‘I’ve had bad depressions. Last time was in 2006. Work helps but when you are depressed you don’t know what to do. I once got some long ribbons of yellow silk and tied up Lila [Rego’s muse, model and friend since 1985] really tight with big bows and then drew her. That’s the feeling of it: all tied up, unable to move. I made one of those drawings into a Christmas card. The Jungian therapy I have undertaken has helped my art. It has liberated it’
    Rego in coat of many colours, looking joyous

  • Rego with her work The Flying Mermaids, from 2017, in a photograph taken by her son, Nick Willing. In an interview with the Guardian that year, he talked about making a film about Rego. ‘My mother started telling me stories I hadn’t heard before, so I asked if I could make a film about her. Even a few years ago, she would have told me to fuck off – but to my amazement, she agreed’
    Rego reacts to some plaster mermaids that hang above her head

  • Angel on show at Tate Britain’s retrospective in 2021. For this iconic painting, Rego took inspiration from the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The figure, filling the canvas and looking assertive, is seen as a symbol of female power and strength. Rego said this was the work she would like to take with her on her last journey
    Visitors walk past her painting of a woman with sword in one hand, sponge in the other

  • Gluttony, from 2019, on show at the Venice Biennale earlier this year. The Financial Times last year asked Rego which of the seven deadly sins was her worst. ‘I would say gluttony,’ she replied. ‘When I was at finishing school, I ate everyone else’s leftover puddings and put on so much weight that my mother didn’t recognise me’
    A model of a troll-like obese woman, surrounded by nightmarish doll-babies

  • The Barn, currently on show at the Picasso museum, Malaga. In 2021, the Observer’s Laura Cumming wrote of a Tate Britain show of Rego’s work: ‘The Tate wants to make an activist of Rego, and it is true that the radicalism of her early politics is there at the end, with paintings about human trafficking and genital mutilation. But the artist is ill-served by this reductive brief. Her gift is for the exact opposite: for deeply ambiguous and morally disturbing scenarios in which you are asked to think harder, feel more, be turned inside out’
    The Barn, currently on show at the Picasso museum, Malaga. In 2021, the Observer’s Laura Cumming wrote of a Tate Britain show of Rego’s work: ‘The Tate wants to make an activist of Rego, and it is true that the radicalism of her early politics is there at the end, with paintings about human trafficking and genital mutilation. But the artist is ill-served by this reductive brief. Her gift is for the exact opposite: for deeply ambiguous and morally disturbing scenarios in which you are asked to think harder, feel more, be turned inside out.’
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