Central Hall
Paintings in this room
Three dashing young boys stand on the steps of an impressive building. They are known as the Balbi children because the painting was once in the collection of the wealthy Balbi family in Genoa, but we don‘t know who they are. Some have suggested they were members of the Franchi family because t...
Gainsborough painted this portrait of William Hallett (1764–1842) and Elizabeth Stephen (1764–1833) shortly before their marriage on 30 July 1785. The couple are shown arm-in-arm on a morning walk with a Pomeranian sheepdog. The style of the portrait draws on the work of earlier painters Watteau...
Gerrit van Honthorst had an international reputation for attracting high-status clients. After working in Rome, he was invited to England in 1628 by Charles I and painted several royal portraits before returning to live mainly in The Hague. In Holland he became a favourite of Charles’ sister Eliz...
This full-length double portrait of a married couple is a powerful image of the pride and prosperity of seventeenth-century Flanders and its citizens. Dressed in costly black silk garments, both sitters are looking confidently at us. The woman sitting in a red velvet upholstered armchair sports a...
Thomas Lawrence was only 20 when he painted this, one of the most brilliant of all royal portraits. Yet it failed to please either King George or Queen Charlotte and did not enter the Royal Collection. It remained on Lawrence’s hands and was in his studio sale after his death.Lawrence painted Que...
This is the earliest surviving example of a life-size, full-length portrait on canvas or panel painted in Italy. We are not certain of the sitter’s identity, but he may be Gerolamo II Avogadro of Brescia (who died in 1534). He was the father of Conte Faustino Avogadro, who is shown in a portrait...
This portrait was long known as ‘Il Cavaliere dal Piede Ferito’ (‘The knight with the wounded foot’). But the brace supporting the man’s left foot suggests he was suffering from foot-drop, a fairly common disorder caused by the failure of the ankle muscles. The way in which his plate armour has b...
Reynolds portrays Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833) aged 27, in action as commandant of the British Legion cavalry in the War of American Independence. Tarleton was famed for his reckless bravery and savagery, as well as for his vanity. He later became MP for Liverpool and defended the slave trade, o...
This full-length portrait is of Thomas Lister, who became the 4th (and last) Baron Ribblesdale in 1876, when he was just 22. He was a Liberal peer, a lord-in-waiting at court and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery.Plans to paint Lord Ribblesdale in formal hun...
Zoffany has portrayed Mary Oswald at the age of about 50. Probably born in Kingston, Jamaica, she was the only child of Alexander Ramsay, a Glasgow-born merchant who settled in Jamaica, acquiring plantations there and in the South American colonies. In 1750, she married Richard Oswald, a Scottish...