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The First World War through a woman’s lens: Olive Edis and Madame Yevonde

This has been a year of significant anniversaries: 11 November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War and on 6 February this year Britain celebrated 100 years since the Representation of the People Act granted some women the right to vote. The coming-together of these two anniversaries offers an opportunity to reflect on the part played by two professional women photographers in the First World War: Madame Yevonde and Olive Edis, whose high-profile work is held in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. …

By George Mind, Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Student, Photographs

06 November 2018

Bella Freud x Gillian Wearing

Earlier this month we caught up with designer Bella Freud to discuss her exciting new collaboration with artist Gillian Wearing and publisher Plinth.…

By National Portrait Gallery,

18 July 2018

Boy in a Red Waistcoat by Paul Cézanne, 1888-90. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1995.47.5

Charlie Clift: Telling people’s stories through portraiture.

Launching this year, our Photo Prize Blog series features blog posts by photographers from the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017. Explore the processes, motivations and stories behind the photographs, as well as the unique insights and experiences from the projects featured in the Prize.…

By National Portrait Gallery,

21 November 2017

Self-portrait (with Nazi badge between her teeth) by Claude Cahun, 1945. Jersey Heritage Collections © Jersey Heritage

Claude Cahun: Freedom Fighter

Claude Cahun lived her life in a spirit of rebellion and defiance. From her precocious teenage years as Lucy Schwob, defying conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her shaven head and male attire, to her direct resistance of German occupying forces, she actively worked against the suppression of liberty and freedom - a life of resistance, which is encapsulated by the portrait above, taken in May 1945.…

By Louise Downie, Curation and Experience Director, Jersey Heritage

09 May 2017

Constance Barbara (née Clarke), Lady Baird (later Lady Kennedy) by Henry Walter ('H. Walter') Barnett

Shoulder to Shoulder: Women during the First World War

In researching the roles played by women during the First World War, I was keen that the display presented some of the less discussed roles women played and that it make the best use of the strengths of the Gallery’s collection. …

By Imogen Lyons, Photographs Cataloguer

07 October 2015

Do you know who is with Audrey Hepburn?: Searching for rare early photographs

One of the biggest challenges associated with planning an exhibition devoted to photographs of Audrey Hepburn was that so many of the images of her were already published. The exhibition would only be of interest to the National Portrait Gallery if it included a sufficient number of previously unknown and unexhibited images, a challenge I was glad to take on. Some of the first images I came across during my research were a series of advertisements discovered published in The Sketch by Antony Beauchamp in which Audrey was uncredited but to my eyes recognisably her. Three from the 1949 sitting appear in the catalogue which accompanies the exhibition (including an important Hepburn estate loan) but two new ones, belonging to a member of the public, have subsequently come to light and are shown here for the first time.…

By Terence Pepper, Senior Special Advisor on Photographs

06 August 2015