National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)

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National Portrait Gallery
Established 1856
Location St Martin's Place, WC2, England
Collection size 10,000 portraits
Museum area unknown
Visitor figures 1,500,000 (2005)[1]
Director Sandy Nairne
Nearest tube station(s) Charing Cross, Embankment, Leicester Square
Website www.npg.org.uk

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery primarily located in St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square in London, but with various satellite outstations located elsewhere in the UK.

Contents

The gallery opened to the public in 1856. It houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter. The collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture[2].

Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds 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 Some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right.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 portrait of Edward VI by William Scrots, Patrick Branwell Brontë's painting of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, or a sculpture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in medieval costume. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969.

The Gallery moved to its present building north of and adjacent to the National Gallery in 1896. It was designed by Ewan Christian in a Neo-Renaissance style, built by Shillitoe & Son[3] and has been expanded twice. The first extension was funded by Lord Duveen in 1933, whose wing runs along Orange Street, and the second by Dr. Christopher Ondaatje in 2000. The Ondaatje Wing occupies a slither of land between the two 19th-century buildings of the National Gallery and the NPG and is notable for its immense, two-storey escalator that takes visitors to the earliest part of the collection, the Tudor portraits.

In addition to its permanent galleries of historical portraits, the National Portrait Gallery exhibits a rapidly changing collection of contemporary work, stages exhibitions of portrait art by individual artists and hosts the annual BP Portrait Prize competition.

  1. ^ Association of Leading Visitor Attractions
  2. ^ Every great country must have its portrait gallery
  3. ^ Hulme, Graham pg 105
  4. ^ He was previously at the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and from 1901 to 1927 filled the role of Surveyor of the King's Pictures.
  5. ^ Dictionary of National Biography entry
  6. ^ Later director of the National Gallery.
  7. ^ DNB entry
  8. ^ Obituary of his father, the chemist Henry Wilson Hake
  9. ^ Who Was Who entry
  10. ^ Who Was Who entry
  11. ^ Later director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge (1967–73), and first ever director of the Ashmolean Museum (1973–85).

Hulme, Graham, The National Portrait Gallery - An Architectural History, National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2000, ISBN 1 85514 293 7

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Museums and galleries in London

Apsley House · Barbican Art Gallery · British Museum · Burgh House · Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms · Percival David Foundation · Design Museum · Dulwich Picture Gallery · Estorick Collection · Foundling Museum · Freud Museum · Geffrye Museum · Guildhall Art Gallery · Handel House Museum · The Hayward · HMS Belfast · Hogarth's House  · Horniman Museum · Imperial War Museum · Institute of Contemporary Arts · Kenwood House (Iveagh Bequest) · London Transport Museum · Museum in Docklands · Museum of London · National Army Museum · National Gallery · National Maritime Museum · National Portrait Gallery · Natural History Museum · Petrie Museum · Queen's Gallery · Ranger's House (Wernher Collection) · Royal Academy of Arts · Royal Collection · Saatchi Gallery · Science Museum · Serpentine Gallery · Sir John Soane's Museum · Somerset House (Courtauld Gallery • Gilbert Collection • Hermitage Rooms) · Sutton House · Tate Britain · Tate Modern · Victoria and Albert Museum · V&A Museum of Childhood · Wallace Collection · Whitechapel Art Gallery

Coordinates: 51°30′30″N, 0°07′46″W

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