National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery stands in the City of Westminster, beside Trafalgar Square. It occupies a Portland-stone building opened in 1896, next to the National Gallery. The site was chosen after earlier homes in Great George Street, Exhibition Road and Bethnal Green proved too small or damp. The architect was Ewan Christian, who died before the doors opened. Busts of three founders flank the old main entrance: Philip Stanhope, Thomas Babington Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. Two wings now link the 19th-century core to the Ondaatje Wing of 2000, designed by Edward Jones and Jeremy Dixon. The gallery was the world’s first public portrait collection when it opened in 1856. Its holdings include paintings, drawings, photographs and caricatures of historically important Britons. The Chandos portrait of Shakespeare is the best-known image, though its identity is uncertain. Self-portraits by Hogarth and Reynolds sit beside historical documents such as the 1604 Somerset House Conference group. Portraits of living figures have been allowed since 1969, and the annual BP Portrait Prize brings fresh contemporary work. The gallery also loans pieces to regional partners like Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. Inside, visitors follow a two-storey escalator down to Tudor portraits in the Ondaatje Wing. The main galleries display works ranging from an anamorphic portrait of Edward VI to Patrick Branwell Brontë’s painting of his sisters. In 2009 the archive revealed a 1909 murder–suicide in the former Arctic Room. After a three-year refurbishment the gallery reopened in 2023 with refreshed displays. The building’s light courts and oak panelling frame each face and figure, letting the sitters speak across the centuries.