Icons and Identities

Drawing on the outstanding collection of the National Portrait Gallery, this volume celebrates the variety and complexity of portraiture

The National Portrait Gallery holds the world’s most extensive collection of portraits: a museum of people, a gallery of stories and ideas, and a home of artistic masterpieces. Icons and Identitiesdraws together icons from Shakespeare to Audrey Hepburn alongside less well-known sitters that provide insight into the representation of identity in portraits. It also includes some intriguing surprises to reflect the diversity of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection and to introduce audiences around the world to exceptional portraits of many kinds.

Icons and Identities shows how artists, working across mediums, have revealed the visually stimulating and intellectually vibrant tradition of portrait making. The book is structured around a series of key themes and each section includes a selection of works from a range of periods.

Artists include: Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Andy Warhol, Marlene Dumas and Shirin Neshat.