National Portrait Gallery

At the beginning of his career, William Nicholson experimented with graphic art, producing hand-coloured woodcuts that were widely praised for the boldness and simplicity of their design. These were to establish his reputation as a radical artist and pave the way to his future success as a portrait painter.
This display focuses upon three examples published as part of an edition of lithographs by William Heinemann, in 1899. Through his portraits of Queen Victoria, James McNeill Whistler and Sarah Bernhardt, Nicholson sought to express the essential characteristics of his subjects, producing striking images that continue to resonate today.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

The seventeenth century was witness to frequent and often gruesome plots, scandals and murders. From the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 to the Rye House Plot of 1683 the motivation was often religious
although religion and political power were inextricably linked during the Stuart period. Not all seventeenth-century ‘plots’ were plots at all
the Popish Plot of 1678 was fabricated by Titus Oates with a consequence that dozens of innocent people were brutally executed. Sexual politics could be equally controversial and were central to the case of the Thomas Overbury murder in 1613. This display explores these unwholesome episodes through contemporary prints and raises questions about the role that print culture could play in promoting a highly biased version of events.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

Sculptural tomb effigies offer a fascinating comparative to painted portraits. This display focuses on a small selection of portraits of sixteenth-century queens and consorts, pairing copies of the sculpted effigies from the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey with painted portraits, in order to explore the process of exchange that occurred between the images that represent the sitters in life and those that memorialise them in death.
This comparison can be explored in the Gallery through the display of electrotype copies of the effigies. These were made by the Birmingham firm of Elkington & Co. in the late nineteenth century, and were based on plaster cast moulds taken by Domenico Brucciani. For example, the electrotype copy of Maximilian Colte’s effigy of Elizabeth I can be compared both with a portrait of her as a young queen, and with the magnificent image presented in the ‘Ditchley’ portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, which is on display in Room 2.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

The Anglican Church began its spread across the world after the Church of England separated from Rome in the sixteenth century. The first manifestation of Anglicanism was in North America in 1607 but no overseas bishops were appointed for the next 150 years
colonial churches instead reported to the Bishop of London. The first bishop of an overseas territory was consecrated in 1784 by the newly formed American Protestant Episcopal Church which had split from the Church of England after the American War of Independence.

The loss of the American colonies led the Church of England to seek to strengthen its role overseas. The Consecration of Bishops Abroad Act was passed in 1786 and the Church began a more concerted effort to appoint bishops for overseas dioceses. However, by 1840 there were only ten colonial bishops
this slow progress led the Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield, to publicly declare that ‘an Episcopal church without a bishop is a contradiction in terms.’

In the nineteenth century, despite a rapid increase in the consecration of overseas bishops, the Church was reluctant to give overseas dioceses any independence. By the end of the century interest in missionary work had waned, as had efforts to increase the number of native-born clergy. In the twentieth century the Church had renewed its overseas efforts and there was a gradual understanding of the need to give autonomy to overseas dioceses.
This display presents a selection of works from a collection of portraits of Anglican bishops that was donated to the National Portrait Gallery by the Corporation of Church House in 1949.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

The 12 new works to be displayed represent the latest portrait studies from an artist who has sketched and drawn since childhood and painted since the late 1960s but only began to exhibit his art works six years ago

Suitable for

• Any age

Jonathan Yeo is an artist perhaps best known for his celebrity subjects but this display will reveal the fascinating range of subjects who have sat for the artist, all from the life. Sitters have been selected from the world of politics, media and the arts and will include Kevin Spacey in role as Richard III, Grayson Perry as Claire and Michael Parkinson.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

Hungarian-born photojournalist Michael Peto’s photographic career is celebrated in this new display organised in collaboration with the University of Dundee. The ten photographs by Michael Peto (1908-1970) taken in London during the 1950s and 1960s to go on display from 17 September 2013 will include the photograph shown to the right of Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton during the recording of the acclaimed BBC radio production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood in October 1963.
Other celebrated subjects in the display will include Samuel Beckett photographed in his Paris apartment in 1961, Nelson Mandela photographed during a brief visit to London in June 1962, Jennie Lee photographed near the Houses of Parliament in 1965, and Paul McCartney with The Beatles during the making of the Richard Lester directed film Help! (1965). One of Peto’s last sittings featured in the display shows a young Ian McKellen at the time of his success in the Prospect theatre production of Richard II in 1969.
Born in 1908 in Bata, Hungary, Peto settled in London at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, working firstly as a writer. He took up photography in 1947 mainly to illustrate his own work. His photographs were first published in The Observer in March 1949. He became a regular contributor alongside other celebrated photojournalists including Jane Bown, Peter Keen and David Sim. During the 1950s and 1960s, Peto documented social issues and the key cultural and political figures of the era. His celebrated publications include The Dancer’s World (1963) with Nigel Gosling and About Britain (1967) with Kenneth Harris. Following Peto’s death in 1970, his archive of 130,000 original negatives and vintage prints was donated by his family to the University of Dundee.

Suitable for

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson.php

The Elizabethan period spanned over forty years and was a time of extraordinary enterprise. The known world was expanding through maritime exploration and trade, literacy increased, cities grew in size and the economy flourished. The new opportunities for wealth creation and creativity in this period also led to the rise of the middle classes.

The exhibition includes many outstanding paintings of Elizabeth I and her courtiers including explorers, and soldiers, and enchanting portraits of her female courtiers. Visitors will also come face-to-face with lesser-known Elizabethans including butchers, goldsmiths, brewers, merchants, writers and artists.

These will be shown alongside artefacts from the period including exquisite jewellery, books and coins, which give a fascinating glimpse into their way of life.

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Gift Aid tickets

Full price £13.50
Senior citizens (aged 60 and over) £12.50
Concessions £11.50
Children 12–18 years, registered unemployed, students, disabled people (with free entry for one carer)
National Art Pass holders 50% discount
Proof of age or status required

The ticket price includes a voluntary Gift Aid donation of 10% above the standard ticket price. If you donate we are able to claim Gift Aid on the full amount, not just the 10%. Your donation will help us to acquire outstanding portraits for our Collection.

Standard tickets

Full price £12.20
Senior citizens £11.30
Concessions £10.40
Children 12–18 years, registered unemployed, students, disabled people (with free entry for one carer)
National Art Pass holders 50% discount

For full details of ticket pricing follow the link below

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/elizabethi/tickets.php

The leading international photographic portrait competition, The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize celebrates and promotes the very best in contemporary portrait photography. The competition was open to everyone aged 18 and over from around the world.

Organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Prize has established a reputation for its diversity of photographic styles submitted by a range of photographers, from gifted amateurs and photography students to established professionals.

In the Prize’s search for excellence, photographers are encouraged to interpret ‘portrait’ in its widest sense of ‘photography concerned with portraying people with an emphasis on their identity as individuals.’

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013 exhibition will run at the Gallery from 14 November 2013 to 9 February 2014 before touring to two venues around the UK.

Suitable for

• Any age

Website

http://www.npg.org.uk/photoprize1/site13/prize.php

The Great War in Portraits (27 Feb-15 Jun 2014), will kick start a four-year public programme of displays, events and workshops for young people at the Gallery which is promising “an approach never previously adopted”

Showing how the First World War was depicted and reported with a degree of visual detail unprecedented in the history of conflict, the exhibition will feature the now familiar and iconic portraits of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Winston Churchill together with images reflecting the war experience of those from all social classes who served.

Important loans of major art works by Lovis Corinth and Max Beckmann and Kirchner’s painting Selbstbildnis als Soldat (Self-portrait as a Soldier) will bring searing German Expressionistic masterpieces into a mix, which will also include Harold Gillies disturbing photographs of soldiers with facial injuries from the Royal College of Surgeons and Henry Tonks’ portraits of similarly disfigured servicemen.

A First World War portrait of an infantry officer
Wilfred Owen by John Gunston, 1916© National Portrait Gallery, London
An installation of 40 photographs displayed in a grid formation will present a range of protagonists from medal winners and heroes to the dead and the executed, interspersed with artists, poets, memoirists and images representing the roles played by women, the home front and, the Commonwealth.

The exhibition will also feature a divergent pairing of British and German films devoted to the Battle of the Somme never previously seen together; and a rare photograph, Courtellemont by Jules Gervais, described by curators as “a portrait of absence” depicting a deserted, battle-scarred landscape.

NPG Curator Paul Moorehouse says “a complex range of human experience” will be covered in the show which will reveal the “evolving different roles, responsibilities and destinies” and “illuminate the way war was represented through portraits of individuals – each caught up in events beyond reason or control”.

An accompanying programme includes a display called keep the Home Fires Burning, featuring stars of Music Halls of the Great War period and First World War-inspired performances by the Portrait Choir.

An NPG-led project called National Memory – Local Stories, will look at local collections throughout the UK and investigate how they can be used to engage with young people and highlight significant moment during the war.

A fully-illustrated book by Paul Moorhouse with an essay by Sebastian Faulks will accompany the exhibition priced £18.95.