National Portrait Gallery Highlights Tour

I was in time for a highlights tour at the National Portrait Gallery. Harry, the tour guide, focused on six pieces:

"Portrait of Mai" is said to be the finest work by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The NPG and the Getty worked together to bring it into public view. It will be shared between the two museums. The price tag was a staggering £50 million.

The Ditchley Portrait, by Sir Henry Lee, is the largest known portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. It was painted to help him win back the queen’s forgiveness after he chose a partner she did not approve of. 

He placed her on a globe to show her power. The sky is shown turning from dark and stormy to brighter skies. This could indicate how Elizabeth had brought the country from difficult times to a more stable, calmer period.

Sir Henry Lee made some adjustments to reality:

• She's shown towards the end of her reign, aged about 60 years old.
• Her skin is clear and without the smallpox scars she tried to cover up with white make-up.
• Her mouth is closed, hiding her decayed teeth.
• She still has her famous red hair – there is no grey or white in it. (She wore wigs as she became older.)
• She is wearing the sort of dress a younger unmarried woman may have worn.  

This portrait of Shakespeare, attributed to the painter, John Taylor, is the only one that can be claimed to have been painted from real life. The white collar is typical of what men of those times would have worn. The painter apparently extended Shakespeare's hair and mustache to be fuller. 

Known as the "Chandos portrait," after a previous owner, it was the first portrait to be acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, when it was founded in 1856. At the bottom above, you can see NPG 1, which indicates this.

This painting of Dame Christabel Pankhurst was first shown at the Women’s Exhibition, organized by the Women's Social and Political Union, in London in 1909. A leading Suffragette, Christabel Pankhurst was the central force behind the Women's Social and Political Union, which was founded by her mother, Emmeline, in 1903 in order to lobby for female suffrage.
 

 

This tapestry is by Michael Armitage and is based on a painting celebrating key workers during the Covid pandemic. It is meant as a tribute to community workers who are largely ignored.

This portrait, showing the wrinkles where it had been folded, was discovered in 1914 by Clement Shorter, lying on top of a cupboard at the home of Rev Nicholls in Banagher, Ireland. It had remained there since Nicholls first moved to Ireland in 1861.