Art and photography

The art and photography collections visually chronicle over 500 years of London, showcasing the city’s importance as an artistic hub through thousands of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and contemporary works.

The Rhinebeck Panorama provides an extraordinary bird's-eye view of London at the beginning of the 19th century.

The art and photography collections comprise a visual encyclopaedia of London from medieval altarpieces to contemporary digital art. Spanning over 500 years, these collections showcase the importance of London as a centre for the visual arts and as a subject for artists and photographers. Together they provide a visually rich and diverse reflection of the city’s physical and social fabric.

Our art collection

The art collection consists of around 25,000 paintings, prints, drawings and a small but growing number of artist’s films and new media. Amongst the artists represented are David Bomberg, Canaletto, Ithell Colquhoun, Susan Hiller, Stanislawa de Karlowska, Christopher Nevinson, Henry Nelson O’Neill, Samuel Scott and Walter Sickert.

“London’s skyline has been captured in epic panoramas, and everyday life by artists like William Hogarth”

  • A watercolor painting of a young woman in historical dress, carrying a basket and holding a cloth, standing against a brown background.

    Paul Sandby's 1759 drawing of a shrimp seller was meant to be turned into a print for a further series of his 'London Cries'.

  • Illustrative collage featuring historical and cultural references from london, with colorful images of people, landmarks, and events placed within ornate frames on a patterned background.

    This 2008 painting by the Singh Twins is an extraordinary and eclectic mix of the historical and the contemporary, the serious and the ephemeral.

Amongst the collection’s earliest works are contemporary paintings of the Great Fire of London and of Thames Frost Fairs. The museum also holds important views of the ever expanding city, including London from Greenwich, from around 1625, the Rhinebeck Panorama made around 1806, and Pierre Prévost’s epic, 6m-wide London from the Tower of St Margaret’s Church Westminster, painted in 1815. Complementing the landscapes are large groups of drawings and prints focusing on social observation, such as watercolours by Thomas Rowlandson and Paul Sandby, as well as prints by William Hogarth.

More modern acquisitions reflect the evolving nature of artistic practice, particularly in the area of film, and include major works such as Jeremy Deller’s Putin’s Happy (2019) and Steve McQueen’s Grenfell (2017), given to the museum by the artist in 2023.

“The largest photo in our collection is of the Battersea Power Station at 7ft high”

  • Historic sepia-toned photograph of the westminster abbey facade with surrounding buildings, captured in the early 20th century.

    A view of Westminster Abbey from the west with Westminster Palace under construction in the background, around 1857, by Roger Fenton.

  • A young boy in a cap holds a milk bottle, standing behind a crate filled with empty and full milk bottles.

    A boy photographed taking a milk bottle from a crate by Fred Wilfred, who worked as Chief Photographer for Hawker Siddeley Aviation during the 1950s. Acclaimed for his portraiture and wedding photography, his documentary work, like this photograph, has remained largely unseen.

Our photography collection

The historic photographs collection contains around 150,000 items, including, prints, contact sheets and negatives. Its strength lies in its breadth and documentary focus, with emphasis on working and social life, as well as London’s cityscape.

The collection holds large bodies of work by many prominent photographers, including Dorothy Bohm, Bill Brandt, Christina Broom, Armet Francis, Neil Kenlock, Roger Mayne, Margaret Monck, Charlie Phillips and Wolfgang Suschitzky. In 1986, the museum acquired the entire black and white archive of freelance photojournalist Henry Grant, which offers an immensely broad record of all aspects of London life from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Our earliest print is by one of photography’s pioneers, William Henry Fox Talbot. Dating from around 1845, it shows Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s newly opened Hungerford Bridge. Other important early works include two stereoscopic daguerreotypes of Queen Victoria, made in 1854 by Antoine Claudet, Photographer to the Queen.

A major Heritage Lottery Fund grant in 2016 enabled us to establish a collection of photography from the 1970s to early 2000s with a more conceptual twist. This includes prints by artists such as Margaret Harrison, Rut Blees Luxemburg and Vera Lutter, whose camera obscura print, Battersea Power Station XVIII, is at 7ft high – by far the largest photograph in the collection.

More in our collections

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