The Queen’s Gallery was constructed on the south-west corner of the Palace, facing the garden, and was completed in 1831. The building was converted into a private chapel for Queen Victoria in 1843 but destroyed in an air raid in 1940.
At the suggestion of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, it was redeveloped as a gallery for the Royal Collection in 1962.
The Queen's Gallery was planned as a small exhibition space open to the public in which changing exhibitions could be mounted to display works of art from all sections of the Royal Collection.
The Gallery was opened to the public on 25 July 1962. In the following decades a succession of exhibitions was mounted, each lasting between a year and eighteen months.
The first was a miscellany of items, entitled Treasures from the Royal Collection. Other exhibitions included displays of works by Leonardo (1969-70), Van Dyck (1968), Canaletto (1980-81); photographs from the Royal Photograph Collection; postage stamps from the Royal Philatelic Collection; and Fabergé items.
The expansion of The Queen's Gallery is the most significant addition to Buckingham Palace in 150 years. It was reopened by The Queen on 21 May 2002 and is now open to the public on a daily basis.
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The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace is a permanent space dedicated to changing exhibitions of items from the Royal Collection, the wide-ranging collection of art and treasures held in trust by The Queen for the Nation.
Dutch Landscapes
15 April - 9 October 2011
This exhibition brings together 42 remarkable works from the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting, including landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp and Meyndert Hobbema.
The fine detail and meticulous finish of Dutch landscapes appealed to British taste. The ability of Netherlandish artists to depict mood and emotion through the landscape of their homeland or the Italian countryside influenced the great British painters John Constable and JMW Turner. On seeing a seascape by Willem van de Velde the Younger, Turner remarked, ‘Ah! That made me a painter’.
The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton & Antarctic Photography
21 October 2011 - 15 April 2012
This exhibition of remarkable Antarctic photography by George Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley marks the 100th anniversary of Captain Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole.
Ponting’s dramatic images record Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910–12, which led to the tragic death of five of the team on their return from the South Pole. Hurley’s extraordinary icescapes were taken during Ernest Shackleton’s Polar expedition on Endurance in 1914–17, which ended with the heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Both collections of photographs were presented to King George V and are today part of the Royal Photograph Collection.
