The National Portrait Gallery huge collection of portraits of famous Britons. Place for her to find a suitable: just north of Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross, in the heart of the British capital.

Opened in 1856, the gallery became the world's first publicly accessible collection of paintings, graphic and sculptural portraits. The idea of ​​such a museum offered a member of the British Parliament, a writer and art dealer Philip Henry Stanhope Earl. For the gallery, he fought for ten years, on the third attempt the House of Commons, with the approval of Queen Victoria has allocated money for the project. Stanhope closest associates began to historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Bust these three outstanding British installed above the main entrance to the gallery.

During the first forty years of his life a collection of not just changing the address is a philanthropist William Henry Alexander had not donated a large sum for the construction of a special room in the square of St. Martin. Erects its architect Ewan Christian, to create a building in the style of the Florentine Renaissance. Subsequently, the gallery expanded twice: in the thirties of the last century and in 2000, when there was a new wing with a huge escalator takes visitors to a collection of Tudor portraits.

The walls of the main building, decorated with busts of prominent figures: art critic and writer Horace Walpole XVIII century, painters Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Anthony van Dyck, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence.

The collection of the gallery has more than eleven thousand portraits, executed in various techniques: about four thousand paintings, sculptures and miniatures, as well as seven thousand graphic works, of which the public throughout the year demonstrates just three hundred (graphic works cherish from exposure to light). In addition, the museum has collected more than 220 thousand photographic images - more than half of them are original negatives.

Gallery holds true treasures: for example, the famous portrait of "Chandos" painted by an unknown master, shows how it is considered by William Shakespeare. Exhibits self-portraits of famous British artists - William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the picturesque image of Thomas Cromwell and Richard III, the sculpture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in medieval costumes.

Before 1969 gallery did not procure surviving portraits of people (it was believed that after their death should be at least ten years), but now the rules have changed - for example, some images of Prince Charles is 74. Of recent acquisitions - a portrait of Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge. Kate, whose grandfather was a miner, married Prince William and is now the patron of the National Portrait Gallery. Author canvases Paul Emsley wrote Kate smiled and called his model is very warm person.

Meeting gallery covers a variety of genres. For example, here are exhibited cigarette packs with pictures of Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton - portraits made with a great sense of humor.