Allen, who owns the painting, is shown sitting on the stool wearing a polka dot puffer jacket and boots revealing a tattoo on her left leg.<\/p>\n
It will be on show for the next year and was unveiled the night before Allen begins a run of three gigs at the London Palladium theatre. <\/p>\n
She added: “Nieves captured the feel of the album so brilliantly and I knew immediately it would make a very strong album cover.<\/p>\n
“It seems to me the portrait reflects so many facets of the album – strength, power, vulnerability, determination and confusion, amongst many others – that it acts as a key to the whole listening experience. I love it.”<\/p>\n
West End Girl was a huge success for Allen, earning her a Brit Award nomination and peaking at number two in the UK chart last year. <\/p>\n
It was Allen’s fifth studio album and focused on her break-up with her ex-husband, US actor David Harbour. <\/p>\n
Artist Gonzalez said she felt “enormously fortunate” to have been part of the album’s journey.<\/p>\n
“I wanted it to be an intimate and direct image, but also powerful,” she said.<\/p>\n
“To show her strength, her wisdom, through the eyes of the contemporary women that we are.”<\/p>\n
National Portrait Gallery director Victoria Siddall said: “Our collection celebrates the people who have shaped our history and culture, and Lily Allen is undoubtedly one of the defining voices of her generation.” <\/p>\n
The gallery’s collection includes likenesses of famous figures from William Shakespeare to Queen Elizabeth II, and from Charles Darwin to Adele. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allen, who owns the painting, is shown sitting on the stool wearing a polka dot puffer jacket and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-340054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}