Inside Buckingham Palace’s Picture Gallery | Masterpieces of the Royal Collection

The Royal Collection is one of the world's great art collections, and it's really quite rare in still being displayed in the palaces and residences that it was originally acquired for. There are over a million objects in the collection, from paintings, drawings and books, to works of art such as sculpture, furniture and jewellery. The picture gallery at Buckingham Palace is one of the places where you can see some of the real highlights of the Royal Collection. The re-hang in 2026 will enable visitors to see almost twice as many paintings as were hung here previously, taking the total number from around 60 to 120. In this short film, we're going to be going on a tour, looking at just some of the real key highlights of this new re-display. The picture gallery at Buckingham Palace runs through the very heart of the building. But this building wasn't always a palace. In fact, it was bought by George III and Queen Charlotte as a family home, and at that time it was known as Buckingham House. The royal couple had separate apartments, as would have been common at the time, with George III on the floor below and Queen Charlotte in the space that we're standing in now. The plan to create a long gallery was actually the vision of their son, George IV, who wanted a space to display his amazing collection of old master paintings. Sadly, George IV never saw his vision come to fruition because he died before it was finished, and it was during the reign of Queen Victoria that the picture gallery was first created. The earliest arrangement of pictures in the picture gallery in the 1840s focused on Dutch and Flemish pictures, in accordance with George IV's vision. This is what he particularly admired and what he collected, and we can see examples of the types of things that he acquired and indeed some of the pictures he bought hanging on the wall behind me. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, though, didn't keep the picture gallery looking the same throughout their reign. In the 1850s, they changed the colour of the walls to a kind of lilac colour, and you can see that in a watercolour dating from 1853 that shows the christening of their son, Prince Leopold. In the 1850s, Prince Albert also instituted a reframing campaign, where many of the pictures were reframed in matching gold frames. Now, what was special about these frames was that the profile, which was very shallow, meant that the frame didn't cast much of a shadow onto the picture from the light coming from above. The frames also allowed for glazing to protect the paintings from the London smog. After the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, Queen Victoria didn't want any changes to be made to the picture hang that they'd devised together, and inventories show us that it remained exactly the same. After her death, however, in 1901, when Edward VII came to the throne, changes were made, and the number of paintings was increased to 209. Italian paintings were also introduced, and the wall colour was changed to red. By the 1950s, the number of paintings on display in the Picture Gallery had been quite dramatically reduced. This reflects a more minimalist aesthetic popular around the middle of the 20th century, together with a quest for clearer sight lines and more generous spacing. You can see that the hang today, with 120 paintings here, reflects a balance between that Edwardian exuberance and the more minimalist aesthetic of the 20th century. The rehang here in the Picture Gallery has enabled us to introduce more paintings than previously, and to find home to some of the most important paintings in the collection. The walls have been returned to this wonderful shade of emerald green, including the picture chains, which reflects how the gallery would have appeared for several decades during the 20th century. The rehang in the Picture Gallery has also presented us with a really unique opportunity to introduce works previously undergoing conservation treatment, including this wonderful painting here. One of the really exciting new additions to the Picture Gallery is this group of really important 18th-century paintings, produced in both Italy and Britain, and including works by George Stubbs, Johann Zoffany, and Canaletto. One of the most significant new additions to the picture hang here at Buckingham Palace is the Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johann Zoffany. Zoffany was a German-born artist, and he was a real favourite with George III and Queen Charlotte. In 1772, he was sent by Queen Charlotte to Florence to make a record of the Tribuna, which is the octagonal room at the centre of the Uffizi Palace, which housed the most important works within the Medici collection. And this painting is really the result of that trip. We can see here the gallery filled with paintings. These really reflect 18th-century tastes. However, undoubtedly the most unexpected thing that Zoffany did was include people in this commission, and this is not something that Queen Charlotte had asked for. And what we're seeing here is essentially aristocrats, as well as collectors and connoisseurs, and also artists, including the artist himself, who includes rather cheekily his self-portrait, peeping out from behind this painting by Raphael. Queen Charlotte did not like this painting, and in fact she refused to hang it in any of her apartments, which is quite interesting, because today it really is one of the most exciting and venerated paintings within the collection. And it's a really apt inclusion, because what we're looking at is a gallery full of artwork. And this painting really acts as a celebration of the appreciation and enjoyment of art, something that really strikes a chord with the Picture Gallery today. The Rehang in the Picture Gallery reunites paintings by Rembrandt in the Royal Collection. Old favourites have returned, so the shipbuilder and his wife is still here, along with Agatha Bass, the amazing painting that you can see here on my left, this woman greeting us at a doorway. But we've also got new additions, like this one, Christ and Mary Magdalene at the tomb. And this religious painting, I think, really demonstrates what makes Rembrandt such an original and innovative artist. This is quite a common story for artists to represent, but Rembrandt takes a slightly different moment in that tale. Mary Magdalene is realising that this man, who she's mistaken for a gardener, is Christ. And what's interesting is that we as the viewer also don't immediately recognise that this man, who looks like a gardener, he's got a shovel and he's wearing a hat, is Christ. So we're placed within that story and made to feel as Mary Magdalene would have felt. Another significant new addition to the Picture Gallery Hang is this work by Caravaggio and the subject matter is taken from St Mark's Gospel and it tells the story of Christ here, represented by the beardless figure on the right hand side, calling Peter and Andrew to be his disciples. They are fishermen and they've been fishing here on the Sea of Galilee and Christ says to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And this painting is really typical of innovative style in this very dramatic use of lighting and also this really dramatic use of these kind of tight compositions. So he's got these very monumental figures all grouped together in this very dense composition, very tight to the picture surface. Here we've decided to display this alongside Van Dyck's painting of Christ Healing a Paralysed Man and when you put these two paintings together you can really see the debt that Van Dyck owes to the older Italian artist in this really dynamic but tight composition. You can see that he's using light to draw up the Paralysed Man and take him away from the darkness and towards the light. Another one of the paintings that's returned to the Picture Gallery as part of the Rehang is this one behind me, Joanna Vermeer's Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman. There are only around 35 paintings by Vermeer that are known to still survive in the world today, making this quite a rare survival. This is probably the most famous painting in the Royal Collection and I think it really demonstrates what makes Vermeer's painting so special and unique. It's an unusual composition, the figures here, a lady and a gentleman, are pushed right to the back and it's a very calm scene. It's effectively elevating the everyday into something very, very beautiful. One of the most interesting details in this painting is the mirror that hangs on the wall above the Virginals. If you look closely you can see that this includes a reflection of the lady but her face is actually looking towards her companion rather than down at her hands as she's actually playing. And if you look really closely you might be able to spot an easel reflected in that painting. These are the legs of the easel of the artist, Vermeer, and it reminds us that this is a painting after all and not reality. Among the really notable works returning to the Picture Gallery is this self-portrait by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. It was presented by the artist to Charles I by way of an apology for inadvertently having sent the King an inferior studio work of a lion hunt. Here we have united this painting with Rubens's portrait of Van Dyck who was one of his most notable and important young studio assistants. The paintings were probably produced around five years apart and what's interesting when you look at the portrait of Van Dyck is that you can tell that the same paint has been used to outline the figure as has been used to model the features suggesting it was almost certainly painted from life in a single sitting possibly as a preparatory study for another painting. During the reign of Charles II these two paintings hung together at Whitehall Palace in a passage between the green room and the closet so part of the King's private apartments and where he would have seen these paintings daily. The Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace is one of the key entertaining spaces and it's used regularly by the King and other members of the royal family for important events and receptions. During the summer months when the palace is open to the public the Picture Gallery is one of the key features of the main visitor route enabling people from all over the world to experience its grandeur and to see some of the wonderful paintings we've been looking at today.