PORTLAND GALLERY
The Portland Gallery at 316 Regent Street, London was opened in 1849 in the former premises of Eliza
Nunn, a straw-hat maker. Portland Gallery was created by a body most commonly called the National Institution for the Exhibition of Fine Arts, one of several attempts to break the grip of the Royal Academy. Under the direction of architect Frederick Tyerman, a little portico sprang up in front, while at the back a hall was added or adapted out of existing premises along Little Portland Street. Springtime art exhibitions alternated with popular shows, such as ‘a grand moving diorama of the Ganges with Calcutta and Juggernaut’, painted around 1849 by Thomas Robert Colman Dibdin (1810–1893) from travel sketches by James Fergusson (1808-1886) of Langham Place, Dibdin had previously illustrated Fergusson’s 'The Rock Cut Temples of India'. In 1852 one of the early annual Architectural Exhibitions took place, while in 1854 the gallery displayed a complete model of St Petersburg. The gallery’s conductor, John Bell-Smith (1810-1883), was bankrupted in 1863 when the gallery closed. Later the premises became a second-rate club. Suffolk artists who exhibited with the Portland Gallery include Wilkinson John Gilbert and James Peel.
The National Institution of Fine Arts was a Victorian-era art society that provided an alternative exhibition space for artists, its goals were to provide a less restrictive and more equitable alternative to the established exhibitions at places like the Royal Academy. The organisation began in 1847 as the 'Institution for the Free Exhibition of Modern Art' and held exhibitions 1848–49 in a building known as 'St. George's Gallery' on Knightsbridge Road, next to Hyde Park, London. Its purpose was stated in an 1848 catalogue, 'Freedom for the Artist, certainty of Exhibition for his works, and the Improvement of the Public Taste.' The society then changed its name to the 'National Institution of Fine Arts'. The society was founded in 1847 as the 'Institution for the Free Exhibition of Modern Art'.
There is a later Portland Gallery which was founded in 1984 by Tom Hewlett at 3 Bennet Street, St James's, London.