Offering a portrait to the National Portrait Gallery

Our starting point is the Gallery's Collections Development Policy.

We collect portraits of the people who have shaped British history and culture, under the terms of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992. In addition the Gallery commissions portraits of eminent British people and acquires other works relevant to portraiture.

The Gallery is selective rather than comprehensive in acquiring portraits, and decisions about new acquisitions are made in line with our Collections Development Policy. The Gallery's reach is wider when it comes to acquiring portrait photographs and engravings.

When considering a potential acquisition or loan for the Gallery’s Collection, we check whether it meets the following criteria:

• Significance: Does the portrait represent an individual who has made or is making a really significant contribution to British history or culture?
• Representation: Is the individual sufficiently well-represented in the Collection already? Information is available on many of the portraits already owned by the Gallery at Search the Collection.
• Artistic merit: Is the portrait the best or one of the best of the individual and done from life? At an appropriate time of life? Likeness, provenance, historical significance and artistic merit are considered.
• Educational impact: How would the portrait help the Gallery's educational and interpretative work in the appreciation and understanding of portraiture? Would permission to reproduce the portrait on the Gallery’s website be granted?
• Likelihood of display: Would the portrait be displayed regularly in the Gallery or is there a better home for it? Please note that we cannot promise to display portraits that we acquire.

Sending an offer

The National Portrait Gallery welcomes offers of portraits to the Gallery’s Collection, whether by gift, bequest, transfer, Acceptance in Lieu, allocation or loan. Please note that we are currently unable to consider offers of portraits for purchase due to budget restrictions, unless in exceptional circumstances. We hope to be able to consider offers for purchase from 2025, but please keep an eye on this webpage for updates on this.

To help us to carefully consider your offer, please supply an image of the portrait and as much information as possible, including:

• The sitter’s name
• The artist’s name
• Medium, e.g. painting, sculpture, miniature etc.
• Dimensions (preferably in mm)
• Details of any inscriptions or documentation for the portrait
• Information about the circumstances surrounding the portrait’s creation if available, especially whether it was done from the life
• Information on the portrait’s history/provenance and current location
• The terms of the offer, i.e. is it being offered as a gift, bequest or loan? 
• If an artwork, whether it is framed and glazed
• Information about the current condition of the portrait

We also consider gifts through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme and by bequest – as long as the same criteria above apply.

As to borrowing a portrait, while we appreciate receiving such offers, our approach is highly selective, and we are only able to accept very few portraits of outstanding significance.

If you would like to offer a portrait, and you believe it meets the above criteria, please email the above information to the Collections Registration Team at [email protected] or post to Collections Registration Team, The National Portrait Gallery, 39-45 Orange Street, London, WC2H 0HE.

Please note: Offers for the Photographs Collection, Reference Collection as well as Archive and Library Collection should be directed to: [email protected]

Unsolicited and anonymous offers

The Gallery cannot accept unsolicited offers. These are objects that have been left at or posted to the Gallery for donation without prior discussion and agreement with our team.

We are also unable to accept anonymous offers.

Unsolicited and anonymous offers present major legal issues for the Gallery as we become legally responsible for objects that we have not formally acquired and which may have unclear ownership.

The Gallery will do its best to contact the owner of an unsolicited or anonymous offer so that they can collect the object. If the object is not collected within 3 months, or if no contact details are available, full ownership of the object will be transferred to the Gallery’s Board of Trustees who reserve the right to dispose of the object as it thinks fit in line with the Gallery’s Collections Development Policy.

Responding to offers

We aim to provide a decision about all offers within 20 working days of receipt, although please note that it may take longer than this due to the large number of offers we receive each year.

Once we have all information about the offer (we may ask you for further information about the offer), we will share the offer with our Curatorial Team, who will assess it against the Gallery’s Collections Development Policy. The Gallery’s Curators are responsible for particular time periods of the Collection (by century) and also by portrait type such as photographs or prints.

Once our Curatorial Team has carefully considered an offer, a member of the Collections Registration Team will contact the offerer again with our decision, either to present the offer at the next Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting if of interest or to decline if an offer is not considered viable.

First Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting

Offers are discussed at a quarterly Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting, chaired by the Chief Curator. The Curators and Director discuss each offer in line with the Collections Development Policy and against resource availability. The Collections Registration Team will aim to update offerers within 5 working days of the meeting with a definitive response or, if necessary, seeking further information.

Viewing and delivery of offer

If the Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting believes that an offer should go forwards for acquisition, the Collections Registration Team will arrange for the portrait to be brought into the Gallery for a viewing by our Curatorial Team and an initial conservation assessment by the Gallery’s Conservation Team.

Second Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting

The portrait will be viewed in-person at a second Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting where the Director and Curators will approve the portrait for recommendation to the Board of Trustees if they wish it to go forwards or decline if not viable. The Collections Registration Team will aim to update offerers within 5 working days of the meeting with a definitive response.

Trustees Meeting

The Gallery's Board of Trustees, which meets quarterly, make the final decision on accepting portraits for the Primary Collection - whether they be paintings, drawings, engravings, miniatures, sculpture, photographs, mixed media or new media. Once the minutes of the meeting have been approved at the following meeting, they are made available on the Gallery's website, together with the name of the donor or vendor, on the Minutes of Meetings of the Board of Trustees page.

The Chief Curator, meeting with Curators at the quarterly Curatorial Acquisitions Meeting, decides which prints and photographs to acquire for the much larger Photographs Collection and Reference Collection.

If the Trustees approve the portrait, the Collections Registration Team will inform the offerer within 5 working days of the meeting and finalise the acquisition. If the Trustees decline the portrait, the Collections Registration Team will inform the offerer and make arrangements to return the portrait.

Transport and insurance

The Gallery does not expect to pay insurance or transport charges on offers for the Collection, unless otherwise agreed in advance. Normally, we would expect the portrait to be covered by the offerer's insurance while it is on offer to the Gallery, or deposited at the owner’s risk.

Good title

The Gallery needs to establish good title before accepting a portrait. Offerers are asked to supply evidence of ownership and dealers acting on behalf of an owner need to provide evidence that they are entitled to act for the owner. The Gallery is obliged to make a formal check on ownership during the period 1933 to 1945 so that it is satisfied, under Government guidelines relating to Holocaust spoliation, that portraits could not conceivably have been looted by the Nazis, unlikely though this is for most British portraits. Offerers are asked to provide the fullest possible documentation about the provenance of portraits completed in or before 1945. Finally, if a portrait has been imported into Britain since 1970, offerers should provide evidence that it was legally exported from the country of origin. For further information, see the Gallery's Due Diligence policy.

Copyright

Those making an offer should provide information and documentary evidence, if available, concerning ownership of copyright in the portrait. Any work by a living artist or one who died less than 70 years ago will be in copyright. However, a portrait and its copyright may be under 2 different ownerships. For commissioned portraits, copyright in those commissioned before 1 August 1989 usually resides with the commissioner.

Information requests

As a public body the National Portrait Gallery is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and the Data Protection legislation. Although we do not receive many requests relating to particular acquisitions, it is important to be clear that any paperwork supplied to the Gallery may be the subject of a request and made available to the public. If you wish to supply written or email correspondence in confidence (for which the Act provides an exemption), please make this clear at the time of correspondence. This does not preclude disclosure: all access requests are judged on a case-by-case basis according to the Act's legal provisions. The Gallery would of course, where possible, inform those providing information in confidence before disclosing such material.

After acquisition

Following acquisition, the first thing for the Gallery is to ensure a portrait's ongoing good condition, the second is to understand it fully by study and research and the third is to make the portrait known. These steps may happen in parallel. Researching, conserving and mounting, storing and digitising a portrait can be costly. All acquisitions are recorded on Explore our Collection.