Founded in 1856 and located just off Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery is home to the largest collection of portraiture in the world, featuring famous men and women who have helped shape British history from the great Tudor courts to the present day, with contemporary portraits reflecting the diversity, inventiveness and multi-culturalism of modern-day Britain. By weaving together 500 years of history, art, biography and fame, the Gallery offers a unique and fascinating insight into those individuals that together characterise a nation. Visitors can come face to face with kings and queens, courtiers and courtesans, politicians and poets, soldiers and scientists, artists and writers, philosophers and film stars. Its 3,000 paintings feature some of the most iconic and instantly recognisable faces in British history, from Elizabeth I to J. K. Rowling, with artists ranging from Holbein to Hockney. Behind each image is a fascinating story giving an insight into an individual who stood out in their generation and enriched our culture and national consciousness.

National Portrait Gallery, London
St Martin’s Place, London, Greater London WC2H 0HE England
newmedia@npg.org.uk
0207 306 0055
http://www.npg.org.uk/Please remember to double-check the opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit
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02 March 2021
For #womenshistorymonth we've invited @greatwomenart's Katy Hessel to reflect on her favourite female creatives from our Collection - first off, the pioneering Virginia Woolf Read Katy' s takeover in full https://t.co/qF9Ivs3pw9 by Vanessa Bell, 1912 https://t.co/scbnUDLoel
Stories
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Hans Schwarz's 'Bruce Kent'
Bruce Kent
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Dame Laura Knight portraits
Rosie Broadley
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Pop stars and portraits
Victoria Rodrigues O'Donnell
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Gainsborough's family album
Lucy Peltz and David Solkin
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A fantasy of the black and the beautiful
Patricia Yaker Ekall
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The Romantic poets in art
Lydia Figes
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Joining the dots: researching Castle Howard using Art UK
Charles Saumarez Smith
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Double portraits: what do they reveal, and what do they conceal?
Stefani Bednarova
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Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things
Philomena Epps
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Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: the young rebel
Richard Cork
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The gender fluidity of the Chevalier d'Éon
Lydia Figes
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What did Shakespeare really look like?
Lydia Figes
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Who were the Bluestockings?
Lydia Figes
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George Henry Boughton: master of the winter landscape
Elizabeth Heath
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Fighting for representation: suffragettes and art vandalism
Victoria Ibbett
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The history of British football in paintings
National Football Museum
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Who was John Ruskin?
Lydia Figes
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Seven female Pre-Raphaelites
India Lewis
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Ten women who used pseudonyms... and one man
Lydia Figes
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Curations
Explore curated collections of artworks