The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous

British people British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, w ...

. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world that was dedicated to portraits. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off

Trafalgar Square Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster in Central London. It was established in the early-19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. Its name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy, ...

, and adjoining the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

and Montacute House in

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a

non-departmental public body In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process o ...

Collection

The gallery houses

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

s of historically important and famous

, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist. The collection includes photographs and

caricature A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, ...

s as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture. One of its best-known images is the

Chandos portrait The Chandos portrait is an oil painted portrait thought to depict William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Painted between 1600 and 1610, it may have served as the basis for the engraved portrait of Shakespeare used in the ''First Folio'' in 1623. It ...

, the most famous portrait of

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

although there is some uncertainty about whether the painting actually is of the playwright. Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by

William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraving, engraver, pictorial social satire, satirist, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from Realism (visual arts), realistic p ...

, Sir

Joshua Reynolds Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an English painter who specialised in portraits. The art critic John Russell (art critic), John Russell called him one of the major European painters of the 18th century, while Lucy P ...

and other British artists of note. Some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right. Often, the curiosity value is greater than the artistic worth of a work, as in the case of the

anamorphic Anamorphic format is a cinematography technique that captures widescreen images using recording media with narrower native Aspect ratio (image), aspect ratios. Originally developed for 35 mm movie film, 35 mm film to create widescreen pres ...

portrait of

Edward VI Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and King of Ireland, Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. The only surviving son of Henry VIII by his thi ...

by William Scrots, Patrick Branwell Brontë's painting of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, or a sculpture of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

and Prince Albert in medieval costume. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969. In addition to its permanent galleries of historical portraits, the National Portrait Gallery exhibits a rapidly changing selection of contemporary work, stages exhibitions of portrait art by individual artists and hosts the annual BP Portrait Prize competition.

History and buildings

The three people largely responsible for the founding of the National Portrait Gallery are commemorated with busts over the former main entrance on St Martin's Place. At the centre is Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope, with his supporters on either side,

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was an English historian, poet, and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 184 ...

(to Stanhope's left) and

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

(to Stanhope's right). It was Stanhope who, in 1846 as a Member of Parliament (MP), first proposed the idea of a National Portrait Gallery. It was not until his third attempt, in 1856, this time from the House of Lords, that the proposal was accepted. With Queen Victoria's approval, the House of Commons set aside a sum of £2000 to establish the gallery. As well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder trustees included

Benjamin Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a ...

and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter who donated the

to the nation as the gallery's first portrait. Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857.History of the National Portrait Gallery
accessed 26 May 2008. For the first 40 years, the gallery was housed in various locations in London. The first 13 years were spent at 29 Great George Street,

Westminster Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in Central London, Central London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, ...

. There, the collection increased in size from 57 to 208 items, and the number of visitors from 5,300 to 34,500. In 1869, the collection moved to

Exhibition Road Exhibition Road is a street in South Kensington, London which is home to several major museums and academic establishments, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, London, Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, Lon ...

and buildings managed by the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr ...

. Following a fire in those buildings, the collection was moved in 1885, this time to the Bethnal Green Museum. This location was ultimately unsuitable due to its distance from the West End, condensation and lack of waterproofing. Following calls for a new location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist William Henry Alexander. Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, and also chose the architect, Ewan Christian. The government provided the new site on St Martin's Place, adjacent to the

, and £16,000. The buildings, faced in Portland stone, were constructed by Shillitoe & Son. Both the architect, Ewan Christian, and the gallery's first director, George Scharf, died shortly before the new building was completed. The gallery opened at its new location on 4 April 1896. The first extension, in 1933, was funded by Lord Duveen, and resulted in the wing by the architect Sir Richard Allison on a site previously occupied by St George's Barracks running along Orange Street. In February 1909, a murder–suicide took place in a gallery known as the "Arctic Room". In an apparently planned attack, John Tempest Dawson, aged 70, shot his 58-year-old wife, Nannie Caskie, from behind with a revolver, then shot himself in the mouth, dying instantly. His wife died in hospital several hours later. Both were American nationals who had lived in Hove for around 10 years. Evidence at the inquest suggested that Dawson, a wealthy and well-travelled man, was suffering from a

persecutory delusion A persecutory delusion is a type of delusional condition in which the affected person believes that harm is going to occur to oneself by a persecutor, despite a clear lack of evidence. The person may believe that they are being targeted by an ...

. The incident came to public attention in 2010 when the Gallery's archive was put on-line as this included a personal account of the event by James Donald Milner, then the Assistant Director of the Gallery. The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were stored at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, along with pieces from the

Royal Collection The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world. Spread among 13 occupied and historic List of British royal residences, royal residences in the United Kingdom, the collection is owned by King ...

and paintings from Speaker's House in the

Palace of Westminster The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative ch ...

Early 21st century

The second extension was funded by Sir Christopher Ondaatje and a £12m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and was designed by the London-based architects Edward Jones and Jeremy Dixon. The Ondaatje Wing opened in 2000 and occupies a narrow space of land between the two 19th-century buildings of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, and is notable for its immense, two-storey escalator which takes visitors to the earliest part of the collection, the Tudor portraits. In January 2008, the Gallery received its largest single donation to date, a £5m gift from the US billionaire Randy Lerner. In January 2012,

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge Catherine, Princess of Wales (born Catherine Elizabeth Middleton; 9 January 1982), is a member of the British royal family. She is married to William, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne. Born in Reading, Berkshire, Readi ...

, announced the National Portrait Gallery as one of her official patronages. Her portrait was unveiled in January 2013. The gallery holds nearly 20 portraits of

Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau (12 June 1802 – 27 June 1876) was an English social theorist.Hill, Michael R. (2002''Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives'' Routledge. She wrote from a sociological, holism, holistic, religious and ...

and her brother James Martineau, whose great-nephew Francis Martineau Lupton was the Duchess's great-great-grandfather. Bodelwyddan Castle's partnership with the National Portrait Gallery came to an end in 2017 after its funding was cut by Denbighshire County Council. In June 2017 it was announced that the NPG has been awarded funding of £9.4 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund towards its major transformation programme ''Inspiring People'', the Gallery's biggest ever development. The Gallery had already raised over £7m of its £35.5m target. The building works were scheduled to start in 2020. In October 2019, a group of semi-naked environmental campaigners were drenched in fake oil, in the Ondaatje Wing main hall, as part of a protest against BP's sponsorship of a collection of pieces in the gallery. The protest performance piece, which was entitled Crude Truth, involve a clothed protester reciting a monologue in which they called upon arts organisations to sever ties with companies "funding extinction". Three activists covered in black liquid lay down for about five minutes on a plastic sheet before standing up again, wiping themselves down with towels, and cleaning up after themselves. The action, which was applauded by onlookers, passed uninterrupted.

Closure and refurbishment in 2020–2023

National Portrait Gallery London Blavatnik Wing January 2025

A major programme of refurbishment with the project name of "Inspiring People" led to the gallery's closure from 2020 to 2023. Some galleries closed by late May 2020, with full closure by July 2020. There were a number of planned exhibitions and collaborations around the UK to display parts of the collection while the gallery was closed. These included exhibitions starting at the York Art Gallery in 2021, the Holburne Museum, Bath (Tudor portraits, 2022), and museums in Liverpool, Newcastle, Coventry and Edinburgh, which later toured to other venues. Other partners included the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

, the National Maritime Museum and the

. In London, the shops and restaurants closed, but the Heinz Archive and Library remained open. Another programme, called "Coming Home", loaned portraits of individual people to museums in their home towns. Exhibitions also travelled to Japan, Australia and the United States."Inspiring People" The "Inspiring People" project "comprises a comprehensive redisplay of the Collection from the Tudors to now, combined with a complete refurbishment of the building, the creation of new public spaces, a more welcoming visitor entrance and public forecourt, and a new state of the art Learning Centre". The East Wing returned to being gallery space, with its own new street entrance. The refurbishment cost £41 million, was designed by the architect Jamie Fobert and Purcell and the main contractor was Gilbert-Ash. It added new galleries, learning spaces, restaurants and a public forecourt. The gallery's main entrance was moved and features three new bronze doors which carry 45 portraits of un-named women, drawn by

Tracey Emin Dame Tracey Karima Emin (; born 3 July 1963) is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, Neon lighting, neon text ...

. In 2022, the Gallery accepted a £10 million gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, established by U.S.-U.K.

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

Sir Leonard Blavatnik. The new Blavatnik Wing on the Gallery’s first floor contains nine galleries hosting more than one hundred years of British portraits and is part of the Inspiring People project. The Gallery said the gift was the most significant in its history. The gallery was reopened by the

Princess of Wales Princess of Wales (; ) is a title used since the 14th century by the wife of the Prince of Wales. The Princess is the apparent future queen consort, as "Prince of Wales" is a title reserved by custom for the heir apparent to the Monarchy of the ...

on 20 June 2023 and she met Sir

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

whose photography exhibition was the first major show in the new space and viewed the Portrait of Omai by Sir

, which the gallery had just acquired jointly with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for £50 million. The gallery reopened to the public on 22 June. In 2024 the Inspiring People project was short-listed for the

RIBA ''Riba'' (, or , ) is an Arabic word used in Islamic law and roughly translated as " usury": unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business. ''Riba'' is mentioned and condemned in several different verses in the Qur'an3:130

Stirling prize.

Exterior busts

In addition to the busts of the three founders of the gallery over the entrance, the exterior of two of the original 1896 buildings are decorated with stone busts of eminent portrait artists, biographical writers and historians. These busts, sculpted by Frederick R. Thomas, portray James Granger, William Faithorne, Edmund Lodge, Thomas Fuller, The Earl of Clarendon,

Horace Walpole Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (; 24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English Whig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London ...

Hans Holbein the Younger Hans Holbein the Younger ( , ; ; – between 7 October and 29 November 1543) was a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He ...

, Sir

Anthony van Dyck Sir Anthony van Dyck (; ; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Flemish Baroque painting, Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy. The seventh child of ...

, Sir

Peter Lely Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 – 30 November 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court. He became a naturalised British subject and was kn ...

, Sir

Godfrey Kneller Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet (born Gottfried Kniller; 8 August 1646 – 19 October 1723) was a German-born British painter. The leading Portrait painting, portraitist in England during the late Stuart period, Stuart and early Georgian eras ...

, Louis François Roubiliac,

, Sir

Thomas Lawrence Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English people, English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was a ...

and Sir

Francis Chantrey Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey (7 April 1781 – 25 November 1841) was an English sculptor. He became the leading portrait sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts and statues of many notable figures of the time. Chantrey's most notable w ...

Finances and staff

The National Portrait Gallery is an executive non-departmental public body of the UK Government, sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The National Portrait Gallery's total income in 2007–2008 amounted to £16,610,000, the majority of which came from government grant-in-aid (£7,038,000) and donations (£4,117,000). As of 31 March 2008, its

net assets Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, so net w ...

amounted to £69,251,000. In 2008, the NPG had 218

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...

employees. It is an exempt charity under English law.

Directors

*1857–1895: Sir George Scharf KCB *1895–1909: Sir Lionel Cust KCVO FSA – previously at the Department of Prints and Drawings at the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, and from 1901 to 1927 filled the role of Surveyor of the King's Pictures *1909–1916: Charles Holmes – later director of the

*1917–1927: James Milner *1927–1951: Henry Hake *1951–1964: Charles Kingsley Adams *1964–1967: David Piper – later director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge (1967–1973), and first director of the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street in Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University ...

(1973–1985) *1967–1973: Roy Strong *1974–1994: John Hayes *1994–2002: Charles Saumarez Smith *2002–2015:

Sandy Nairne Alexander Robert Nairne (born 8 June 1953) is a British art historian and curator. From 2002 until February 2015 he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Life and career Nairne was responsible for the successful recovery o ...

CBE, FSA *2015 – June 2024: Nicholas Cullinan *2024: Michael Elliott (interim) *2024–present: Victoria Siddall

Legal threat against Wikipedia volunteer

On 14 July 2009, the National Portrait Gallery sent a demand letter alleging breach of copyright against an editor-user of Wikipedia, who downloaded thousands of high-resolution reproductions of

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

paintings from the NPG website, and placed them on Wikipedia's sister media repository site,

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

. The gallery's position was that it held copyright in the digital images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and that it had made a significant financial investment in creating these digital reproductions. Whereas single-file low resolution images were already available on its website, the images added to Wikimedia Commons were re-integrated from separate files after the user "found a way to get around their software and download high-resolution images without permission." In 2012, the Gallery licensed 53,000 low-resolution images under a Creative Commons licence, making them available free of charge for non-commercial use. A further 87,000 high-resolution images are available for academic use under the gallery's own licence that invites donations in return; previously, the gallery charged for high-resolution images. , 100,000 images, around a third of the Gallery's collection, had been digitised.

References

Notes

Bibliography

*"Inspiring People"
National Portrait Gallery News Release, Tuesday 5 November 2019, "National Portrait Gallery Collection to Travel across the UK as Inspiring People Redevelopment Begins in July 2020"
see als
NPG Project Summary
*

External links

* *
RIBA Stirling Prize 2024 shortlist: National Portrait Gallery
{{Authority control Art museums and galleries established in 1856 Grade I listed buildings in the City of Westminster Grade I listed museum buildings Museums sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government Exempt charities Charities based in London 1856 establishments in England Photography museums and galleries in England Ewan Christian buildings

Collection

History and buildings

Early 21st century

Closure and refurbishment in 2020–2023

Exterior busts

Finances and staff

Directors

Legal threat against Wikipedia volunteer

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

External links