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Room 25
Portraits and Politics

This room is mainly dedicated to three full-length portraits of the great adversaries of later Victorian politics, William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, painted by Millais, and the Earl of Balfour by Singer Sargent. Another way in which political personalities of the period were represented to the Victorian public were caricatures, notably for the society magazine Vanity Fair, and represented in this display with a group caricature portrait of the Lobby of the House of Commons.

Room introduction Room 25: wallcase Bodelwyddan Castle

6 portraits on display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery

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Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke

by Carlo Pellegrini
terracotta statuette, 1873
On display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery
NPG 5106

William Ewart Gladstone

by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt
oil on canvas, 1879
On display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery
NPG 3637

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt
oil on canvas, 1881
On display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery
NPG 3241

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, 1st Bt
plaster cast of statuette, 1881
On display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery
NPG 1760

The Lobby of the House of Commons, 1886

by Liborio Prosperi ('Lib')
oil on canvas, published in Vanity Fair Christmas Supplement 1886
On display in Room 25 at the National Portrait Gallery
NPG 5256