Picture Gallery re-hang nearly doubles paintings on show from 63 to 120, with works by Rubens, Caravaggio and Zoffany on display from 9 July.
Buckingham Palace’s Picture Gallery has undergone a re-display that nearly doubles the number of paintings on show from 63 to 120, ahead of the State Rooms opening to visitors on 9 July.
The gallery is one of the State Rooms that open to visitors each summer. The re-display puts on show 120 works from the Royal Collection, including paintings by Rubens, Caravaggio and Zoffany.
Curators drew on historic watercolours, photographs, inventories and architectural schemes to devise the new display, which took 875 hours to hang and brings the room closer to its historic appearance. New emerald-green silk wall hangings and updated lighting have also been installed.
Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of The King’s Pictures, said: “This re-hang is an exciting and rare opportunity to significantly increase the number of world-class paintings on display for visitors, in line with our charitable aim to share as much of the Royal Collection as possible.”
The Picture Gallery was designed to display George IV’s paintings collection and was part of architect John Nash’s transformation of Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace. George IV died before the project was completed, with the first arrangement hung by the time Queen Victoria acceded in 1837. The gallery is used by the Royal Family to host guests, including heads of state, and is seen by more than half a million visitors each year.
A highlight of the re-display is The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johan Zoffany, which depicts the Florentine gallery filled with works and visitors. Although commissioned by Queen Charlotte, the painting was never hung in her apartments, and was later recorded in the Picture Gallery in 1841. It forms part of a new display illustrating British art in the 18th century, reflecting Queen Victoria’s hang in the 1840s, which also includes A Rough Dog by George Stubbs and Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Johann Christian Fischer.
Five paintings by Rembrandt and one attributed to his studio are now hung together, and the re-display unites seven works by Rubens. Rubens’s Self Portrait is shown alongside his portrait of Anthony Van Dyck, recreating a pairing known to have hung together at Whitehall Palace in the 1660s.
Vermeer’s Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman remains in the 47-metre-long gallery, now joined by works including The Letter by Gerard ter Borch. A newly added Caravaggio, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, is displayed alongside Van Dyck’s Christ Healing the Paralysed Man. Remaining works in the gallery include 12 scenes of Venice by Canaletto, Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Man and a Titian scene of a Madonna and Christ Child.
The wall colour has changed several times over the gallery’s history, from golden yellow to lilac, crimson and olive green. Coral pink velvet wall coverings installed in 1976 had deteriorated after 50 years and have been replaced with new emerald-green silk damask.
The summer opening of Buckingham Palace runs from 9 July to 27 September 2026.
