National Portrait Gallery Website

This series contains dated gathered versions (or 'snapshots') of the National Portrait Gallery website. [Please note: These records may be accessed via the UK Government Web Archive].

Please see information at Divisional level

See also PF 148

• Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1997-2017
• National Portrait Gallery, 1856-1856

Topics

Museums and galleries

Official publications

The National Portrait Gallery, London, houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856.

The National Portrait Gallery was established with the criteria that the Gallery was to be about history, not about art, and about the status of the sitter, rather than the quality or character of a particular image considered as a work of art. This criterion is still used by the Gallery today when deciding which works enter the National Portrait Gallery's collection.

The Gallery's early years were spent without a permanent home and for forty years the collection was moved around London to a succession of homes. In 1889, philanthropist, William Henry Alexander (1832-1905), was reported to have offered to pay for a permanent building, provided the government gave a site within a mile and a half of St James's Street, and Lord Salisbury confirmed that the government would accept the offer and donor's condition. The government assigned a site which had previously been occupied by St Martin's Workhouse to the north-east of the National Gallery. The new gallery opened in its present location in April 1896.

1928 the art dealer and benefactor, Sir Joseph Duveen (1869-1939) agreed to fund a £40,000 extension, which took the form of a wing along Orange Street, 100ft long and 32ft wide. A second extension funded by Sir Christopher Ondaatje, opened in 2000.