Image: National Portrait Gallery, London
The National Portrait Gallery in London has put an online archive sale live, offering merchandise and limited editions drawn from exhibition ranges gone by. In a newsletter to subscribers, the gallery described the sale as a chance to “rediscover old favourites from exhibitions gone by,” with items pitched at a wide range of budgets.
The email announcement frames the sale as a retail event rather than an exhibition or public programme, but it is closely tied to the gallery’s wider exhibition history. The available stock includes magnets, bookmarks, tea towels, tote bags, posters, framed prints, folios and limited editions associated with past shows and the gallery’s portrait programme. The gallery’s subscriber email says the sale is intended to give visitors and collectors another way to engage with material linked to earlier exhibitions.
Among the highlighted items is ‘Men’s Where?’ by Jamie Morgan, offered as a limited edition print. The email lists it at £280, reduced from £350. Other featured works include a Tacita Dean unframed limited-edition print, described in the newsletter image captions as showing two stills of hummingbirds, with the price reduced to £1,400 from £2,400.
The archive sale also includes exhibition-linked posters and prints by major photography and portrait names. One item is an A2 poster print of ‘Elizabeth Taylor by Cecil Beaton’, listed at £10, reduced from a regular price of £25. Another is ‘Mask (Rosemary Chance)’ by Yevonde, offered as a limited-edition folio print for £200, reduced from £250. The selection also features an A2 poster print of ‘Palm Tree’ by Lucian Freud, reduced to £12 from a regular price of £25.
Alongside these more expensive editions, the sale includes more modestly priced pieces such as a small framed print of ‘Cecil Beaton Vogue Cover, September 1946’, listed at £80 rather than £100. The newsletter presentation suggests the stock spans different formats and price points, from affordable keepsakes to higher-end collector editions, all drawn from the gallery’s archive of past exhibition ranges.
The sale is hosted through the National Portrait Gallery’s online shop, with the email directing readers to “Shop the archive sale.” The gallery’s newsletter also points readers toward its wider shop categories, including books, kids, stationery and new items, while noting that purchases support the gallery’s programme of exhibitions and help bring its permanent collection to life. The subscriber email carries no date, and the shop gives no closing date: the archive sale collection page states only that it is available for a limited time, while stocks last.
