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National Portrait Gallery, London Coordinates: 51.5094°N 0.1281°W National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a National Portrait Gallery collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856.[4] The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Entrance to the National Portrait Gallery, 2006 Contents 1 Collection 2 History and buildings 2.1 21st century 3 Exterior busts 4 Finances and staff Location within central London 5 Directors Established 1856 6 Legal threat against Wikipedia volunteer Location Saint. Martin's Place 7 See also London, WC2 8 References United Kingdom 9 Further reading Coordinates 51.5094°N 0.1281°W 10 External links Collection 195,000 portraits size Visitors [1][2] Collection 2.06 million (2014) Ranked 11th visitor The gallery houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, attraction selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist. The nationally (2014)[2] collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture.[5] One of its best-known images is the Chandos portrait, the most Ranked 22nd art famous portrait of William Shakespeare[6] although there is some uncertainty museum globally [1] about whether the painting actually is of the playwright.[7] (2014) Director Nicholas Cullinan[3] Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self- portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other British artists of Public Charing Cross note. Some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House transit Charing Cross; Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right. access Leicester Square; Often, the curiosity value is greater than the artistic worth of a work, as in the Embankment case of the anamorphic portrait of Edward VI by William Scrots, Patrick Website npg.org.uk 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. 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 annualBP 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 main entrance. At centre is Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope, with his supporters on either side, Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (to Stanhope's left) and Thomas Carlyle (to Stanhope's right). It was Stanhope who, in 1846 as a Member of Parliament (MP), first proposed the idea of a National Portrait The Chandos portrait of Gallery. It was not until his third attempt, in 1856, this time from the House of Lords, that the William Shakespeare, the proposal was accepted. With Queen Victoria's approval, the House of Commons set aside a first painting to enter the sum of £2000 to establish the gallery. As well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder Trustees NPG's collection included Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter who donated the Chandos portrait to the nation as the gallery's first portrait. Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857.[8] 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. 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 Beningbrough Hall Inside the National Portrait Gallery, moved to Exhibition Road and buildings Bodelwyddan 2008 managed by the Royal Horticultural Castle Society. Following a fire in those buildings, London the collection was moved in 1885, this time Montacute House 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 The locations of the NPG and location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist its regional outposts, past and William Henry Alexander. Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, and present. also chose the architect, Ewan Christian. The government provided the new site, St Martin's Place, adjacent to the National Gallery, and £16,000.[8] The buildings, faced in Portland stone, were constructed by Shillitoe & Son.[9] 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.[8] The site has since been expanded twice. The first extension, in 1933, was funded by Lord Duveen, and resulted in the wing by architect Sir Richard Allison[10] on a site previously occupied bySt George's Barracks running along Orange Street.[11] The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were stored at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire during the Second World War, along with pieces from theRoyal Collection and paintings from Speaker's House in the Palace of Westminster.[12] 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; Dawson shot her 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.[13] Evidence at the inquest suggested that Dawson, a wealthy and well–travelled man, was suffering from a Persecutory delusion.[14] 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.[15] 21st century The second extension was funded by Sir Christopher Ondaatje and a £12m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and was designed by London-based architects Edward Jones and Jeremy Dixon.[16] 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 that takes visitors to the earliest part of the collection, theT udor portraits. In January 2008, the Gallery received its largest single donation to date, a £5m gift from Aston Villa Chairman and U.S. billionaire Randy Lerner. In January 2012, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge announced the National Portrait Gallery as one of her official patronages.[17] Her portrait was unveiled in January 2013. Reports in February 2014 revealed that the gallery holds nearly 20 portraits of Harriet Martineau and her brother James Martineau, whose great-nephew Francis Martineau Lupton was the Duchess's great-great- grandfather.[18] Bodelwyddan Castle's partnership with the National Portrait Gallery came to an end in 2017 after its funding was cut by Denbighshire County Council.[19] It was announced on 15 June 2017 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.[20] The Gallery had already raised over £7m of its £35.5m target. The building works are scheduled to start in 2020.[21] The project's full title is subtitled Transforming the reach of the National Portrait Gallery [22] 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 block busts of eminent portrait artists, biographical writers and historians. These busts, sculpted by Frederick R. Thomas, depict James Granger, William Faithorne, Edmund Lodge, Thomas Fuller, The Earl of Clarendon, Horace Walpole, Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Louis François Roubiliac, William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence and Sir Francis Chantrey.[8] Finances and staff 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).[23] As of 31 March 2008, its net assets amounted to £69,251,000.[23] In 2008, the NPG had 218 full-time equivalent employees.[23] It is an exempt charity under English law.[24] Directors 1857–1895 Sir George Scharf KCB 1895–1909 Sir Lionel Cust KCVO FSA – previously at the Department of Prints and Drawings at theBritish Museum, and from 1901 to 1927 filled the role ofSurveyor of the King's Pictures. 1909–1916 Charles John Holmes – Later director of the National Gallery 1917–1927 James Milner 1927–1951 Henry Hake[25][26] 1951–1964 Charles Kingsley Adams[27] 1964–1967 Sir David Piper
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