In January this year, the AGO acquired an exciting new painting. Made from oil on canvas in the second half of the 1700s, the portrait shows a young woman of colour standing outdoors presenting an orange blossom in her right hand. This new acquisition is an exceptionally rare portrait of an individual woman of colour […]
Edited by Catharine MacLeod and Alexander Marr The essays in this special issue of British Art Studies arose in part from a two-day international conference on Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, sponsored by the Paul Mellon Centre and the University of Cambridge, and hosted by the National Portrait Gallery to coincide with the exhibition Elizabethan […]
Society of Antiquaries of London lecture by Maurice Howard, FSA The recent gift to the Society of this sensitive and haunting portrait enables investigation of the lively debate about antiquities in the late 18th century, the way that learned gentlemen of considerable means chose to create their self-image and, since Marsh lived at Twickenham, its […]
Project Blue Boy will allow visitors to watch and learn about high-tech analysis and treatment of Thomas Gainsborough’s 18th-century masterpiece in the Huntington Art Gallery. One of the most iconic artworks in British and American history, The Blue Boy, made around 1770, undergoes its first major technical examination and conservation treatment in public view, in […]
A new online resource to assist portrait and dress research has been created on the National Portrait Gallery website, utilizing the Gallery’s collection of engraved and hand-coloured fashion plates. One hundred years of mostly women’s fashions from 1770 to 1869 can now be explored by date, by garments, or by the magazine in which the […]
Barings Bank was at one time the oldest merchant bank in the City of London and has played an important role in the development of British and international finance from the late-eighteenth to the late-twentieth century. Barings played a significant role in major historic events, such as, financing the Louisiana Purchase. This exhibition explores the […]
Press release announcement from The Grosvenor Museum, Chester, 21 April 2017: A glamorous portrait of one of Cheshire’s most interesting 20th-century aristocrats has gone on display at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum. The portrait of Sybil, Countess of Rocksavage, later Marchioness of Cholmondeley, was painted by Charles Sims in 1922. The painting was purchased with support from […]
The Garrick Club in London holds a remarkable collection of art works representing the history of the theatre, much of which is displayed throughout the building. There are over 1,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures, a fascinating selection of theatrical memorabilia, and thousands of prints. The new Collections Online Catalogue has just been launched, and can […]
Disability is no respecter of person. Those represented on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery and in its collections are among the most celebrated members of British society but among them are many with disabilities. Some are celebrated in literature: Richard III was famously depicted by Shakespeare as ‘Crookback’, while the poet Byron who […]