Portraits for the Nation

Homes for heroes? Gertrude Prescott Nuding argues that the inspiration behind and debates over the founding of Britain's National Portrait Gallery reveal the Victorian establishment at its most earnest about who was worth celebrating in 'our island story'.

Great deeds are great legacies, which work with wondrous usury. By what men have done, we learn what men can do.
Samuel Smiles, preface to Duty (1880).

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