This gallery holds around 10,000 items of British portraiture dating from as early as 1505. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings and photographs are set in the heart of Trafalgar Square. Perhaps it can be said that it is a haven for the traditional, hoping to explore some of the greatest work ever put onto canvas. Whilst the collection holds works by artists such as Van Dyck and Reynolds, Millais and Tissot, as well as Holbein's partly combusted Henry VII; Henry VIII, it also includes works by Cecil Beaton, David Bailey and Patrick Heron. For some, exhibitions chronicling "Vanity Fair" and the face of Kate Moss may seem like an appeal to intellectual laziness. Rather than acknowledging change as a crisis, the gallery should be seen as an icon which chronicles the characters which made a nation, and not just a way of viewing the more "beneficial" works of art.

National Portrait Gallery Homepage.

Written by  Sybilla Harvey.

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