The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is one of the National Galleries of Scotland. Founded in 1882 by John Findlay, proprietor of the Scotsman newspaper, who gave a large sum of money for its establishment on condition that this was matched by an equally large sum from the government, it was opened to the public on 15th July 1889, and ever since has occupied its distinctive Venetian-style neo-Gothic red sandstone building at the east end of Queen Street, Edinburgh.

The Gallery collects portrait of famous Scots throughout the ages, beginning with a little picture of James's Queen, Mary of Guise, painted in the 1530s and coming right up the present day with portrait of personalities such as Sean Connery the actor, Muriel Spark the novelist and Jackie Stewart the motor-racing world champion. There are oil paintings, water-colours, miniatures, Tassie medallions, sculptures, drawings, engraving and photographs from life, as well as a Reference Archive of photographs of more than 30,000 portraits of Scots, including hundreds of Stewarts, in private and public collections in Britain and elsewhere.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, at Queen Street, Edinburgh, is open from Monday to Saturday 10.00-17.00 and on Sundays from 14.00-17.00.

At present, the ground floor gallery is devoted to a joint display with the Royal Museum of Scotland on the theme of the Dynasty. The Royal House of Stewart, showing portraits and objects connected with the monarchy from the Middle Ages to the Jacobites. This display will end later in 1997, but Mary Queen of Scots and the other Royal Stewart portraits will remain on view after that, in a new arrangement.

A multi-media CD-Rom based on the exhibition and containing over 200 screens, many of them with portraits of the monarchs, is available in the Gallery bookshop or by mail order at a cost of £9.95 + postage and packing, from: National Galleries of Scotland Publications Department, Lodge House, Gallery of Modern Art, Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DZ.

The Stewart Society is very grateful to the SNPG for granting permission for the use of many of its Stewart portraits in the pages of this Web Site. The Gallery presently houses, on loan from the Society, the wonderful pair of portraits by John Singleton Copley (1737-1815), of Duncan Stewart, 6th of Ardsheal (d.1793) and his wife, Anne Irving (d.1802), painted in Boston, Mass, USA . 1767, and of which postcards are available on our Merchandise page.