The Gallery was commissioned by the Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures and Improvements in Scotland and was opened in 1889. In 1906 the Gallery’s administration was vested in the Board of Trustees for the National Galleries. The Gallery’s permanent collection consists of oil paintings, busts and medallions of Scots, but it holds very little in the way of non-current administrative records per se. However, the indexes compiled by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery Reference Section are of interest to many kinds of researcher, including biographers, genealogists, and historians of art, costume, society and culture. A plan to streamline the various index systems and storage facilities of the Reference Section is planned in the near future.

RECORDS OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

The Reference Section of the Gallery holds relatively few administrative records relating to the Gallery itself. The National Archives of Scotland hold the records of the Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures and Improvements in Scotland and the Trustees of the National Galleries, including minute books, committee papers, letter books and correspondence files (National Archives of Scotland reference NG1-9).

PORTRAIT COLLECTIONS
The following material generally covers the sixteenth century to the present day:
Paintings: c.1,250
Drawings: c.1,240
Prints (including engravings, etchings, mezzotints etc.): c.12,400 (additional uncatalogued prints)
Sculptures: c.215
Miniatures: c.200; another 800 works on long-term loan)
Medals: c.200
Portrait Medallions: c.200 Tassie medallions; another c.400 other portrait medallions
Tassie gem casts: c.60,000
Photographs (including the Hill and Adamson calotypes, carte-de-visites, albums and early postcards) - Scottish National Photography Collection, housed in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery: c. 25,000

PORTRAIT FILES AND INDEXES
The principal research source in the Reference Section of the Gallery consists of two series of files (Sitters’ File and Artists’ File) on portraits in public and private hands, containing photographs of the portraits in many cases, information on the artists, sitters, portrait detail, and changes of ownership. In addition the Gallery maintain a Social History Index:

Sitters’ File
c. 20,000 photographs of portraits from the 14th Century to the present in other public and private collections, indexed by sitter and artist/photographer). The majority of the sitters are Scots, although there are small English and Foreign sections.

Artists’ file
c. 15,000 photographs of portraits from the 14th Century to the present arranged according to artist, with details of
portrait painters’ careers, bibliographical and documentary references.

Social History Index
In a large selection of the archive images, appearances of costume, jewellery, animals, weapons, furniture and other subjects are recorded. In total 2,500 topics divided between 100 categories are represented.

Access to the Reference Section of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD is by appointment only. Please telephone in advance.
Opening hours: 1000-1630 Monday to Friday
Tel: 0131 624 6426
Fax: 0131 558 3691
Website: www.nationalgalleries.org