Art & photography

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.

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.

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 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.