Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery - Compton Verney Art Gallery

Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery is a new collaborative display organised with Compton Verney Art Gallery, Warwickshire, to explore identity, representation and the contemporary relevance of portraiture.

This exhibition has been created as part of the Gallery’s transformational Inspiring People project, which includes an extensive programme of nationwide activities, funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund.

Ten loans from the National Portrait Gallery are displayed alongside historic portraits from Compton Verney’s collection, highlighting connections between the people represented and raising questions about who we choose to immortalise in portraiture collections.

The exhibition will highlight people with connections to the Midlands whose ideas, words, art or activism has shaped modern Britain and the wider world. The people represented by the National Portrait Gallery loans include acclaimed writers Benjamin Zephaniah and George Eliot, leading contemporary artists Sonia Boyce OBE, RA and Gillian Wearing CBE, RA, former parliamentarian Mo Mowlam, occultist and writer Aleister Crowley, actress and comedian Dame Julie Walters, Olympic and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Denise Lewis OBE, philanthropist and campaigner Dame Elizabeth Cadbury and activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.