No need for a plane ticket—this week London comes to you at the National Portrait Gallery

Posted on 9 March, 2022

If a jaunt to London isn’t on the cards for you any time soon, the tiny little silver lining is that one of the city’s most fascinating attractions is closed. The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) London is undergoing major renovations and won’t reopen until 2023.

The good news? Some of the institution’s most iconic works have come for a visit here instead.

Shakespeare to Winehouse: Icons from the National Portrait Gallery London is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery Canberra from 12 March until 17 July and will feature more than 80 portraits that rarely, if ever, leave the gallery walls in London.

The exhibition ranges from the portrait of Shakespeare from the late 1550s—which was the very first painting the NPG London ever acquired and is usually on permanent display—through to a photograph of Malala Yousafzai, which the NPG London commissioned in 2018. Along the way you’ll find the faces of Princess Diana, Kate Moss, Mick Jagger, Charles Dickens, Nelson Mandela, Anna Wintour, David Beckham and many more.

Malala Yousafzai, 2018 by Shirin Neshat.

Amongst them are some truly fascinating stories. Like the painting of the Brontë sisters, which is the only surviving group portrait of the English novelists, painted by their 17-year-old brother Branwell. It was long thought to be lost, before being found folded up on top of a cupboard in 1914. When acquiring it, the NPG London made the unusual decision not to restore it, but instead, showcase it complete with crease lines from where it was folded and missing paint, which are all still visible today.

“It’s this very humble object, but incredibly powerful, primarily, because it’s not a big, grand, expensive-looking painting by a fabulously accomplished artist,” says NPG Australia Curator Joanna Gilmour.

The Brontë Sisters (Anne Brontë; Emily Brontë; Charlotte Brontë), c. 1834 by Patrick Branwell Brontë.

“It’s a much more honest representation of them, and you get a real sense of them and who they were. It’s not a portrait where the subjects are trying to be pretending or trying to put on a persona that’s any different to how they actually were in life. So it’s got a wonderful presence to it. Whenever I go to London, I love to go and look at this painting at NPG London, which is not open at the moment. But London’s loss is our gain.”

As well as telling the stories of the subjects featured in the portraits, the exhibition shows the history of portraiture itself.

“It’s not just a fabulous cross-section of British history in terms of the people represented in the exhibition, but it’s also a fabulous cross section of British art history. And just really shows you the way that portraiture has fascinated us across time. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a 1960s or 1970s photograph of The Beatles or David Bowie, or a stunning painting of Queen Elizabeth I, there’s something compelling about portraits,” she says.

Ed Sheeran, 2016 by Colin Davidson.

“For as long as they’ve been making portraits, artists have been tackling that challenge of how do you make a portrait that’s not just a representation of what someone looks like, but which actually tries to get under the skin and tell you something about who this person really is, and what makes them extraordinary, or what makes them special, or what it is that makes them tick? So it shows the timelessness of portraiture as an art form.”

Mary Seacole, 1869 by Albert Charles Challen.

While at the NGP London the artworks adorn the walls chronologically, showcasing somewhat of a timeline of British history, this exhibition groups them based on six interrelated themes, showcasing works that are made centuries apart alongside each other. Think: the portrait of William Shakespeare casually sitting alongside a painting of Ed Sheeren.

“You’d think it’d be strange to see an exhibition where there’s photographs alongside paintings alongside digital works alongside sculpture, but it just all seems to really work,” says Joanna.

David Beckham, November 1998 by Lorenzo Agius.

Feature image: The Capel Family, c. 1640 by Cornelius Johnson