Room by room

Around 1,400 portraits are on display at the Gallery in London throughout the year. The current listing in each room can be accessed through the links by historical period below. Additionally information about portraits on display in temporary displays and exhibitions can be accessed through the events calendar. Information about portraits on display outside the Gallery at our regional partners in Somerset, North Wales and Yorkshire and as part of long-term or exhibition loans can be found within the Beyond the Gallery section of this website.

Tudor and Elizabethan

NPG 290 - © National Portrait Gallery, LondonTop floor galleries covering early English kings, and the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, from 1485 to 1603.

Medieval stairs
Room 1: The early Tudors
Room 2: Elizabethan England
Room 3: Hidden: Unseen Portraits Beneath Tudor Portraits

Stuart and Civil War

NPG 776 - © National Portrait Gallery, LondonTop floor galleries covering the Stuart period from 1603 to 1714, punctuated by the English Civil War, Commonwealth and Protectorate.

Room 4: Early Stuart Britain
Room 5: Charles I and Civil War
Room 6: Science and the Arts in the 17th Century
Room 7: Charles II: The Restoration of the Monarchy
Room 8: The Later Stuarts

Georgian

NPG 3210 - © National Portrait Gallery, LondonTop floor galleries covering the Hanoverian age from 1714 with the reigns of King George I, King George II and King George III.

Room 9: The Kit-cat Club
Room 10: The Arts in the early 18th century
Room 11: Royalty and Religion in the early 18th century
Room 12: The Arts in the later 18th century
Room 13: Science and Industry in the 18th century
Room 14: Britain becomes a World Power
Room 15: New Acquisition
Room 16: The Art of Drawing: Portraits from the Collection, 1670-1780

Regency

NPG 294 - © National Portrait Gallery, LondonThe Weldon Galleries on the top floor encompassing the Regency under King George IV and up to the death of King William IV in 1837.

Room 17: Royalty, Celebrity and Scandal
Room 18: Art, Invention and Thought: The Romantics
Room 19: Art, Invention and Thought: Making the Modern World
Room 20: The Road to Reform

Victorian and Edwardian

NPG 1250 (detail) - © National Portrait Gallery, LondonFirst floor galleries covering the long reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901 and the reign of King Edward VII to 1910.

Room 21: Introduction: Queen Victoria
Room 22: Statesmen's Gallery
Room 23: Expansion and Empire
Room 24: Early Victorian Arts
Room 25: Portraits and Politics
Room 26: Portraits by G.F. Watts
Room 27: Science and Technology
Room 28: Late Victorian Arts
Room 29: The Turn of the Century

20th Century

NPG 6095 - © estate of Augustus John / Bridgeman Art Library www.bridgeman.co.ukFirst floor galleries covering the 20th Century from the onset of the First World War till the end of the 1980s.

Room 30: We are making a New World: Britain 1914-18
Room 31: A National Portrait: Britain 1919-59 and Britain and the World 1939-59
Room 32: Artists & Sitters: Britain 1960-90