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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

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

7 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

6 August 2015

From Downton Abbey to Devonshire House: American Heiresses at the Devonshire House Fancy Dress Ball

Viewers of the television series, Downton Abbey will be familiar with the character of Cora, who as Lady Grantham, is the glamorous American wife of the English landed aristocrat, Lord Grantham. This storyline is a reference to the widespread phenomenon in the late-nineteenth century of American heiresses marrying influential figures from the British establishment, and often becoming charismatic leaders of society in their own right. The current display at the National Portrait Gallery ‘Old Titles and New Money: American Heiresses and the British Aristocracy’ introduces some real-life Coras who married into the British aristocracy, enlivened high-society with their transatlantic charms and boosted the economies of flagging country estates. …

By Emily Burns, Assistant Curator: Van Dyck

25 June 2015

Paint him ‘great and grand’: Julia Margaret Cameron, G.F. Watts and Henry Taylor

11 June 2015 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle) (1815-79). Considered to be one of the most important and innovative photographers in the history of the medium, Cameron took up photography relatively late in life, aged forty-eight, after being given a camera by her daughter Julia and her husband, Charles Norman, late in 1863. She went on to set up a dark-room in the coal-house of her home ‘Dimbola’ in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight and used the glazed fowl-house as her studio.…

By Constantia Nicolaides, Assistant Curator, Photographs (Content and Interpretation)

28 May 2015

On Belonging: Photographs by Ketaki Sheth

Mumbai based photographer Ketaki Sheth, spent several years visiting Sidi villages across small areas of western India, taking portraits of their daily life. First welcomed by Hirbaiben Lobi, a Sidi woman entrepreneur who became a close friend, Ketaki gained unprecedented access and established a unique rapport with her sitters. The Sidi are a close knit community, the descendents of African slave-soldiers, traders and Muslim pilgrims who migrated to India in successive waves between the 9th and 16th centuries. Their languages, cuisine and clothes are Indian but they have maintained a connection with their African roots in the form of musical instruments, dances and aspects of religious practice.…

By Georgia Atienza, Assistant Curator, Photographs (Acquisitions and Collections)

16 April 2015