The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative chambers which occupy the building. The building was originally constructed in the eleventh century as a royal palace, and Westminster Hall survives from this era.
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel.
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.
Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey was an English sculptor. He became the leading portrait sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts and statues of many notable figures of the time. Chantrey's most notable works include the statues of King George IV ; King George III (Guildhall), and George Washington. He also executed four monuments to military heroes for St Paul's Cathedral, London. He left the Chantrey Bequest for the purchase of works of art for the nation, which was available from 1878 after the death of his widow.
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
The Palace of Westminster, the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament, was largely destroyed by fire on 16 October 1834. The blaze was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks which had been used as part of the accounting procedures of the Exchequer until 1826. The sticks were disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords, which caused a chimney fire in the two flues that ran under the floor of the Lords' chamber and up through the walls.
Daniel Maclise was an Irish history painter, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
The Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom preserves and makes available to the public the records of the House of Lords and House of Commons back to 1497, as well as some 200 other collections of parliamentary interest. The present title was officially adopted in November 2006, as a change from the previous title, the House of Lords Record Office.
The Painted Chamber was part of the medieval Palace of Westminster. It was gutted by fire in 1834, and has been described as "perhaps the greatest artistic treasure lost in the fire". The room was re-roofed and re-furnished to be used temporarily by the House of Lords until 1847, and it was demolished in 1851.
The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world.
The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in the UK and around the world, and to promote British art, culture and history. The GAC now holds over 14,000 works of art in a variety of media, including around 2,500 oil paintings, but also sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, textiles and video works, mainly created by British artists or artist with a strong connection to the UK, from the sixteenth century to the present day. Works are displayed in several hundred locations, including Downing Street, ministerial offices and reception areas in Whitehall, regional government offices in the UK, and diplomatic posts outside the UK.
The House of Lords Library is the library and information resource of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provides Members of the House and their staff with books, Parliamentary material and reference and research services.
Old Palace Yard is a paved open space in the City of Westminster in Central London, England. It lies between the Palace of Westminster to its north and east and Westminster Abbey to its west. It is known as the site of executions, including those of Sir Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes and other conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, and James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, following the Battle of Preston.
The Advisory Committee on Works of Art is a committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Committee is responsible for purchasing works of art for the House of Commons; advising the Speaker on all matters relating to Commons' works of art; and advising the Speaker, the Curator of Works of Art, and other officials with respect to the interpretation, care, and management of artwork, furniture, furnishings, and decorative elements within the Palace of Westminster and the other buildings of the Parliamentary Estate.
Richard Coeur de Lion is a Grade II listed equestrian statue of the 12th-century English monarch Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, who reigned from 1189 to 1199. It stands on a granite pedestal in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster in London, facing south towards the entrance to the House of Lords. It was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, an Italian sculptor whose works were popular with European royalty and the nobility, though often less well regarded by critics and the artistic establishment. The statue was first produced in clay and displayed at The Great Exhibition in 1851, where it was located outside the west entrance to the Crystal Palace. It was well received at the time and two years later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed a list of illustrious subscribers to a fund that aimed to raise money for the casting of the statue in bronze.
Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65 is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. It is one of Moore's earliest sculptures in two pieces, a mode that he started to adopt in 1959. Its form was inspired by the shape of a bone fragment. Moore created the sculpture from an edition of 10 working models in 1962; these working models are now in public collections. Moore created four full-size casts between 1962 and 1965, with one retained by him. The three casts are on public display on College Green in Westminster, London; Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; and the garden at Kykuit, the house of the Rockefeller family in Tarrytown, New York. Moore's own cast is on display at his former studio and estate, 'Hoglands' in Perry Green, Hertfordshire in southern England. A similar work, Mirror Knife Edge 1977, is displayed at the entrance to I. M. Pei's east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Westminster cast was donated by Moore through the Contemporary Art Society to what he believed was the City of London, but its actual ownership was undetermined for many years. The Westminster cast subsequently fell into disrepair, and was restored in 2013 after it became part of the British Parliamentary Art Collection; it was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016.
The Terrace, 1909 is a landscape painting by Milly Childers showing the members' terrace of the Palace of Westminster with its view of the River Thames looking towards Lambeth Bridge. It is held by the Parliamentary Art Collection.
The history of the Palace of Westminster began in the Middle Ages – in the early eighth century – when there was an Anglo-Saxon church dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle which became known as the West Minster. In the tenth century the church became a Benedictine abbey and was adopted as a royal church, which subsequently became a royal palace in the 11th century.
Portrait of William IV, artist and date unknown
Battle off Cape St Vincent, 1797, by William Adolphus Knell (1846)
The Wives of Henry VIII by (circle of) Richard Burchett (1854-1860)
Portrait of Margot Asquith, by Philip de László (1909)
Reconstruction of a Medieval mural painting, possibly Queen Philippa and her daughter, by Ernest William Tristram (1927)
