London’s National Portrait Gallery Reborn After a Three-Year Overhaul

It’s splendid, with new galleries, a new entrance, and modern twists.

T he National Portrait Gallery is much loved in the U.K. as both a distinguished art museum and a vibrant, even rhapsodic record of the country’s history. In many ways, it’s our history, too. I’ve written about its very good exhibitions over the years but, alas, the NPG closed in 2020 for a long-planned renovation and addition. I held my breath. I love the place. Wrecking it was certainly a possibility, but it has a director I admire. He’s no doubt inspired by having been born in the same hospital in New Haven where I was born.

Speculation aside, the Brits take their historic treasures seriously. The NPG reopened this summer, christened by the Princess of Wales. I finally got there last week.

This isn’t your father’s National Portrait Gallery, and that’s a good thing.

Big chunks of the place haven’t changed much. Visitors, for instance, can still use the narrow, revolving doors on St. Martin’s Square by the sculpture that memorializes Edith Cavell, the British Red Cross nurse executed in 1915 by the Germans in war-ripped Belgium. She ran an undercover escape route for British and French prisoners of war.

Since 1896, when the NPG moved to its current home, that was the entrance, and a squeezed one it was. Near St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church and Trafalgar Square, it was once seen as a better choice for an entrance than one facing Soho, “a neighborhood of crime and vice,” as Nikolas Pevsner called it. I defer to Pevsner on all things.

Now it’s an exit. People enter via a grander, new entrance facing a plaza on Charing Cross Road that has a bronze, full-length sculpture of Henry Irving, the Victorian actor who specialized in Shakespearean roles and was the first actor to be knighted. The new entrance looks to the gentrified Soho of Leicester Square and West End theaters.

From the war nurse Edith Cavell, whose last words included the insight that “patriotism is not enough,” to the heart of London’s theater and cinema world, to Henry Irving, stage star when Shakespeare was for everyone.

About ten sculpture busts are placed toward the center of the new foyer, just enough off the center that they don’t cause a visitor traffic jam. It’s great to see a museum project that shows art right away. Change is in the air, we see, and it’s not just the new entrance.

Among the group is a bronze of Nelson Mandela, not British but South Africa is a Commonwealth country. The Brits are especially fond of him. He, along with others, led South Africa from apartheid, freeing the U.K. from the stigma of a system to which it had acquiesced for so long.

There’s the actress Sybil Thorndike, known for tragedy and socialism, which so often go hand in hand. The Romantic poet Felicia Hemans, in my opinion a middling talent, gets a bust, as do the textile designer Marion Dorn, the Irish actress Elizabeth Farren, and Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He’s the sole aristocrat there and, though a politician, best known for his letters to his son on becoming a worldly gentleman. And there’s a small bronze version of Thomas Price’s Reaching Out, from 2020. It’s one of the few sculptures of a black woman in the U.K. Then visitors see busts of once avant-garde artists Jacob Epstein and Christopher Nevinson.

Overall, the ensemble seems, to me, a forced, indeed contrived statement of inclusivity. Price’s work, for instance, isn’t really a portrait, and, goodness, she’s texting on her phone. Dorn worked in Britain but was an American. But let’s not quibble. Since its establishment in 1856, and it was the first national museum devoted to portraits, the NPG has confined its mission to inspirational portraits of the great and the good. Royals, prime ministers, war heroes, inventors, humanitarians, and entrepreneurs ruled the roost along with high-end culture figures. No more. Harold Macmillan, move over for Annie Lennox.

The $53 million project, co-designed by Jamie Fobert Architects and Purcell Architects, both in London, renovates the building and transforms offices and nooks and crannies into new galleries. Public spaces increase in size by about 20 percent. Lots of bricked-up windows were freed from entombment, so there’s more natural light. Blocked skylights are now opened.

The dramatically long, wall-clinging elevator is still there, the defining feature of the Ondaatje Wing. It’s from the NPG’s last overhaul, in 2000. Now, though, film still portraits filling the giant wall by the elevator flash at ten-second intervals. There’s Queen Elizabeth II, of course. After a few seconds, the corgi by her side twitches his ear. The NPG understands that the image of the late queen was so ubiquitous for so long that she became, shrinks said, the subject of which Britons dreamed the most. There’s a portrait of Elizabeth anchoring almost every gallery covering her 70-year reign. But then, following her on the NPG’s biggest wall, are stills of Oscar Wilde, David Bowie, and David Beckham, among others from the worlds of sports, culture, and glamour.

On the wall opposite the elevator is a 28-foot-long mural, Work in Progress, depicting women “who have made significant contributions to British history and culture in varying fields of endeavor and at different times.” Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake, two American artists based in Salt Lake City, created it.

It’s fascinating. Boudicca, the Iceni tribal queen, is there, as is Vivienne Westwood. Boudicca killed Romans. Westwood killed fashion worn by dowdy duchesses. Lots of athletes are there, and I didn’t know any of them. Most of the portraits are busts, but the women in the first row are full-length. Caroline Norton, who died in 1877, was a reformer focused on legal rights for women, but she makes an impression through her hoop skirt and bourgeois Victorian regalia. With 130 figures, Work in Progress is a compositional feat.

Margaret Thatcher, though, didn’t make the cut.

The NPG says the women were, more or less, “unrecognized trailblazers.” Thatcher, of course, was anything but unknown, trailblazer that she indeed was. Same goes for Elizabeth I, who gets a front-row seat. It’s great that Agatha Christie, Vera Brittain, Emma Thompson, Margot Fonteyn, and Mary Quant are there but distressing to see the bigoted loudmouths Diane Abbott and Joan Ruddock, whose ’80s call for unilateral disarmament warmed the collectivized Trot heart, if Trots have such a thing as a heart.

The NPG says mistakes were made, Work in Progress involved many artists, Thatcher was meant to be there, but the assigned artist never finished her portrait. Knowing Britain, I do find this believable, alas. Work in Progess has multiple panels. I’d take one down, add the Iron Lady, and say, “Oops, rectified,” unless the NPG is happy to live with an inexcusable snub.

If the movers and shakers behind Work in Progress can’t bring themselves to include a right-wing lightning bolt like Thatcher, try Florence Horsbrugh, the longtime Tory MP from Dundee. She was a pioneer in charity food trucks, then called traveling kitchens, in civilian settings during the First World War. During the Second World War, as a junior health minister, she organized the evacuation of children from urban bomb targets to the countryside. Later, she was the first Conservative woman to hold Cabinet office. In 1936, she became the first MP to be on television.

Still, it’s called Work in Progress for a reason. Faces, it’s said, will come and go. I hope Thatcher gets star treatment the next round as well as Petula Clark, who, I was astonished to see, isn’t there. The ultimate ’60s London chanteuse . . . absent? Come now, get real. Ditch a few activists, reformers, campaigners, advocates, and pacifists. Just thinking about all that earnest nagging gives me a headache. Think “Downtown,” “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” “I Couldn’t Live without Your Love.”

Opposite Work in Progress is a grand introductory wall with a portrait of, first and foremost, King Charles but also portraits of, among others, the tennis star Andy Murray, the actor Russell Tovey, and Alex Katz’s portrait of Anna Wintour, the icy queen of Vogue who is also, I believe, an American citizen, though a Daughter of the British Empire. No matter. The wall looks fantastic, with decorous though staid portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales seeming at home with edgier portraits like Tovey’s, by Doron Langberg, or Lucy Jones’s portrait Tom Shakespeare: Intellect, with Wheels, depicting the wheelchair-bound bioethicist.

There’s a big idea behind these portraits, in all shapes and sizes. The face of the nation, now or in the past, isn’t just movers and shakers in politics, business, the aristocracy, and the military. Among the biggest changes, and it’s refreshing, is the purge of many of the big beasts of post-war politics. There’s no Boris, no David Cameron, no Gordon Brown, no Ted Heath, and few bested rivals or ministers of this-or-that. Unless you, like Churchill, saved the nation or, like Mo Mowlam, had a magnetic presence and story, you’ve been cut from spaces focused on what I call the modern era, which is my lifetime.

It’s not that “patriotism is not enough,” as Cavell said while heading to the firing squad. Patriotism’s different. It’s not only about wars, elections, sacrifice, and righteousness. The NPG expands what love of country means.

It’s a smart move that’ll resonate with people and better represent the country’s character. The Brits, like us Americans, must look at their politicians and see blowhards, sewer rats, and oafs. People are tired of politics, if they’re not altogether hostile toward politicians. Those who deliver culture, entertainment, and technological change seem to matter more. This, of course, is also where British influence is today.

That said, there’s still lots of what I’d call historical history, especially from the age of the Tudors to the Victorians. It’s tighter, though, clearer, handsomer, and punctuated with new angles.

And some spaces aren’t much changed. A few years ago, for example, the NPG rehung and reinterpreted its Tudor galleries, which starts the history of British portraiture. Early portraits of Henries VI, VII, and VIII, with their miniaturist detail and jewel-like palettes, are icons. The genealogies of the Yorks, Lancasters, and Tudors seem to have been clarified. Henry VIII’s six wives, in proximity, are surrogates for dynastic politics.

A good likeness was not Holbein’s sole concern in painting a royal portrait. Surface sparkle and the conveyance of power figured, to be sure. Still, I think these likenesses weren’t off by much. They are very English faces. Sumptuous adornments aside, few are what I’d call lookers, and most I’d call pasty and pinched.

Perfectly lit, set against saturated wall colors, in a tight hang and galleries that aren’t grand, they forge a sense of enigma while endowing one with a sense of being there, in their ambiance, hold the smallpox.

Margaret of Beaufort’s 1510 portrait sets the stage. It’s Britain’s first full-length portrait of a woman but, beyond that, she’s a mover and shaker few know, but move and shake she did, though in this portrait she kneels in prayer. At age 12, Margaret, the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, married Edmund Tudor, Henry VI’s half-brother. At 13, she bore the baby who, after a war and endless connivance in which she was central, became Henry VII. During Henry’s reign, she was a formidable power behind the throne and an immense presence in Tudor image-making.

Elizabeth I’s magnificent full-length portrait is flanked by Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon, developing her evolution from a young, much-contested queen to a European potentate ruling an empire on the cusp. Near her, too, are impressive portraits of men in her life including Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, and Robert Dudley. Many, ultimately headless, are hard to tell apart, but the labels are both succinct and intelligible. They’re written for people who want to learn, not be asked how this or that makes them feel.

Here’s another change, not big but meaningful. At well-sequenced points, the NPG dedicates a gallery to a medium we didn’t much see before. Near the Tudor spaces is a lovely room dedicated to miniatures by artists such as Nicholas Hilliard. These sweet little things, usually watercolor on ivory, highlight the intimacy of portraits rather than their authority.

Another genre new to the NPG — the life mask and, eerily, the death mask — has its own space in a little rotunda I’ve never noticed before. Cromwell, Thomas Lawrence, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley are there. The concept’s creepier than the reality. The death masks, devoid of animation, look like empty vessels. The life mask, from 1991, of contemporary artist Marc Quinn is a different deal altogether. It’s cast from eight pints of the artist’s frozen blood. The hum of the refrigeration unit built into the case drew my attention and, after a few moments, my amazement. I’m not sure the gallery works.

A giant change is the proliferation of photographs. Insofar as the permanent collection is concerned, I’ve always thought of the NPG as a place for paintings. In its new incarnation, lots of so-so paintings have disappeared, with very good photographs of new subjects in their place. A new gallery of daguerreotypes from the 1830s into the 1850s, when the medium was new, underscores how transformative photography was. Photography made the likeness more egalitarian. A portrait wasn’t for the rich and famous anymore.

The NPG is missing a fancy equestrian portrait of Charles I, which is too bad since nothing defines his strengths and weaknesses better. There are moments when an American like me, of Roundhead rather than Cavalier stock, needs a primer, though if history teaching in the U.K. is as bad as it is in the U.S., all of us need one.

The English Civil War and Commonwealth era seem straightforward, but the Glorious Revolution isn’t. The NPG does very well in coaxing us via portraits, a timeline, and a genealogy from the ascent of the Catholic James II — Charles II’s brother — to the Duke of Monmouth’s Protestant conspiracy against him, the Protestant aristocracy’s invitation to William of Orange to invade at his earliest convenience, James’s flight, and the ascension of William, his nephew, and William’s wife, Mary, his daughter, to succeed him in 1689 as joint rulers.

Of the many subsequent events, three transformed the country. First, a bill of rights in 1689 affirmed the primacy of Parliament. Second, failed rebellions in Scotland and Ireland put these regions under London’s thumb and made the United Kingdom whole. Third, it was agreed that Anne, Mary’s sister, would rule after William’s death. If she died without an heir, and all 14 of her children died before she did, the crown would bypass quite a number of English Catholics and land on the head of the Elector of Hanover, a Protestant and, when the time came, Charles I’s great-grandson. Thus we have George I, the first of four King Georges in a row and, in his case, a king so German that he never learned English.

For the next 200 years, British kings and queens were almost entirely of German stock. Elizabeth II’s mother was Scottish, jolting the line with north-of-the-border blood. Prince Philip was a Greek prince who considered himself Danish but, in reality, was German. Among Prince Andrew’s flaws is his square Hanover head, which looks like a paving stone.

A selection of Godfrey Kneller’s 42 Kit-cat Club portraits was very fun once I put aside the yucky fact that most wore expansive wigs to cover heads shaved bald because of lice. Painted between 1703 and 1717, they show some of the aristocrats, intellectuals, pols, and businessmen who bolstered the Protestant monarchy and socialized and connived at the tavern belonging to Christopher Cat. These men, aptly called Whigs, are a broad cross section of humanity. The Duke of Lennox and Richmond, for instance, switched from Protestant to Catholic and back, depending on the tide. The 4th Baron Mahun of Okehampton fought in dozens of duels until, finally, he got a fatal hole in him. William Congreve wrote comedies for the stage. John Vanbrugh designed the gardens at Castle Howard. Robert Walpole became for 20 years Britain’s first prime minister.

Contra the Kit-cat portraits is John Wright’s Portrait of George Jeffreys, from 1675. Jeffreys became James II’s hanging judge, showing no mercy to Protestant rebels. It’s an early portrait before Jeffreys lost his baby face and started ordering rope in bulk.

The NPG has always had a splendid, grand gallery packed with late-18th- and early-19th-century swagger portraits. Centering the new iteration is Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai, from 1776, which the NPG now owns along with the Getty. I wrote about the acquisition a few months ago. Displayed on a deep red wall, it looks smashing.

When the NPG paid its share — $32 million — for the portrait, long in a private collection, it touted its addition of a person of color. Omai was indeed the first Polynesian to visit Britain, traveling there with Captain Cook, but I think he was as close to an aristocrat as could be found in Bora Bora. The NPG calls Reynolds’s portrait a triumph in inclusion and globalism. I call it Orientalism à la Delacroix, Gérôme, and Sargent. His frock is totally fake. No one in Tahiti wore so much clothing, and, while visiting London, Omai wore only Savile Row.

Whatever. It’s a splendid portrait, seven feet tall, displayed in a Salon Style hang with Reynolds’s Portrait of Joseph Banks, from 1771, alongside three Lawrence portraits — of the Earl of Liverpool, who was later the prime minister, of the 3d Marquess of Londonderry, and of Henry Brougham. William Beechey’s Mrs. Siddons with the Emblems of Tragedy and his portrait of Thomas Hope complete the group. Right now, if London has a more sumptuous wall, I don’t know it.

And what a selection. Hope was Regency London’s premiere interior decorator, and Mrs. Siddons its star actress. Liverpool was bound to lead the nation during the Napoleonic Wars. Banks was a botanist and explorer as well as the man who devised the idea of sending convicts to settle Australia. He sailed on The Endeavour with Captain Cook. The Omai painting enjoys a vista at the other end of which is a portrait of Queen Victoria.

On Saturday I’ll write about the galleries showing portraits from the Victorians to Cate Blanchett, Kate Moss, and Kate Middleton, from George IV to George Michael. I’ll also look at the NPG’s new exhibition philosophy.