Angus Trumble salutes the glorious portraiture of Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by the Liangis family 2018
Dempsey’s People curator David Hansen chronicles a research tale replete with serendipity, adventure and Tasmanian tigers.
These full-length figures in watercolour, gouache and pencil date mostly from the 1820s, and almost all come from the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.
Joanna Gilmour examines the prolific output of Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, and discovers the risk of taking a portrait at face value.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
Representations of the inhabitants of the new world expose the complexities of the colonisers' intentions.
Celebrating a new painted portrait of Joseph Banks, Sarah Engledow spins a yarn of the naturalist, the first kangaroo in France and Don, a Spanish ram.
Anne Sanders writes about the exhibitions Victoria & Albert: Art & Love on display at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace and the retrospective of Sir Thomas Lawrence at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Christopher Chapman highlights the inaugural hang of the new National Portrait Gallery building which opened in December 2008.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Robert Oatley AO 2007
To accompany the exhibition Cecil Beaton: Portraits, held at the NPG in 2005, this article is drawn from Hugo Vickers's authorised biography, Cecil Beaton (1985).
In focussing on the importance of gifts in the building of the collection, prominence must be given to the most spectacular of the National Portrait Gallery's acquisitions; the portrait of Captain James Cook RN by John Webber R.A.
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) was one of the leading portrait painters of the Georgian era.
8 portraits in the collection
Omai (Mai) (c. 1750-1778), the first Polynesian to visit Britain, was a young man of middling social standing who volunteered to sail from Huahine to England with Captain Furneaux on the Adventure (the ship accompanying James Cook's Resolution on Cook's second voyage of discovery (1772-1775).
2 portraits in the collection
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), acknowledged as one of the world's great portraitists, was master of portraits in the 'Grand Manner', replete with moral and heroic symbolism.
3 portraits in the collection
Sir William Beechey, portrait painter and pupil of Johann Zoffany, was greatly influenced by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
1 portrait in the collection
Thomas Phillips was born in Dudley, Warwickshire and initially trained as a glass painter before moving to London, aged 20, with a letter of introduction to the painter Benjamin West.
6 portraits in the collection
William Dickinson (1746-1823) was a London-born draughtsman, engraver and print publisher.
1 portrait in the collection
Benjamin West (1738-1820), an American painter, arrived in England in 1763 after a Grand Tour in Italy and soon won acclaim.
1 portrait in the collection
James Heath commenced an apprenticeship with an engraver named Joseph Collyer at the age of fourteen.
2 portraits in the collection
Samuel Shelley entered the Royal Academy Schools as a seventeen year-old in 1774 and exhibited at the Academy regularly from this time until 1804.
2 portraits in the collection
George Romney, painter, was born and trained in the north of England until 1762, when moved to London, where he exhibited at the Society of Arts and later at the Free Society and the Society of Artists.
2 portraits in the collection
Augustus Keppel (1725–1786), naval officer, joined the navy at the age of ten and had risen to the rank of commander by the time he was nineteen.
1 portrait in the collection
William Owen moved to London from his native Shropshire in 1786 and was apprenticed for seven years to the coach-painter Charles Catton.
1 portrait in the collection
George Garrard ARA, born in London, trained under the animal painter Sawrey Gilpin and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools at the end of 1778.
1 portrait in the collection
