London Life

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A fresh face

JUST as faces age, a few unwelcome lines were beginning to show on the National Portrait Gallery, so it was decided that a little bit of work was called for—although something more than a light nip and tuck. Three years and £35.5 million later, the results are ready to be unveiled (on June 22).

The National Portrait Gallery has occupied its site next to the National Gallery since 1896 and it has always been an underwhelming spot. Rather than a stately atrium, some revolving doors were all that separated it from the buses, pedestrians and mish-mash of traffic lights and zebra crossings on the Charing Cross Road. As an introduction to a pantheon of Britain’s great and good, it was all rather apologetic.

Now, it is getting a new entrance on its north façade by Irving Street, its 40 galleries are being revivified, new commercial facilities added, subterranean spaces opened up, a new Learning Centre fashioned and the entire collection rehung.

During the gallery’s closure, many of its pictures have been out at its regional outposts and partner venues (Beningbrough Hall in North Yorkshire, Montacute House in Somerset and Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire among them). Together with their return to London, the National Portrait Gallery is relaunching with exhibitions of the work of Paul McCartney and the pioneering portrait photographer Madame Yevonde.

Serendipitously, visitors will also be greeted by Joshua Reynolds’s great Portrait of Omai (about 1776), jointly acquired by the UK gallery and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, US, for £50 million. Now, at last, the National Portrait Gallery has the glamour and swagger to match Omai’s own.

Michael Prodger