Art Fund Popular Portraits
33 Portraits in set
Objects purchased using an Art Fund New Collecting Award to acquire popular, global and ephemeral portraits for the National Portrait Gallery. Commenced in 2017, this project aims to collect portraits made, owned, displayed and viewed by ordinary people from the medieval period to the present. With a particular focus on pre-1600 material, it explores the ways in which identity was understood and expressed before painted portraiture arrived in Britain in the sixteenth century. Other themes, including ceramic as a medium for portraiture, social and cultural diversity and national heroes will be explored up to the present day. The project aims to demonstrate the impact of portraiture on our everyday visual experience by collecting objects with a range of functions from propaganda to memorialisation.
