Explore LGBTQ+ art in the Collection

Discover queer artists and art, the stories behind their lives and how they came into the Collection.

Tomato plants growing in an empty field

Robert Colquhoun

On blue patterned wallpaper hang two blurry paintings; a window is open and bright to the left side, under which is a small wooden table. The bed is pressed against the wall and a yellow armchair sits to the right.

Ethel Sands

an abstract image blue and grey and yellow rectangles are stacked on top of one another; a grey figure of a person stands at the bottom right corner.

Keith Vaughan

A still life of a black jug holding a purple flower and a lemon beside it in front of a blue and flowery wallpaper.

Duncan Grant

A tall woman in a black top and long red skirt.

Ethel Walker

A man wearing black and a black hat with a moustache stands at a port

Christopher Wood

Explore LGBTQ+ stories

Explore queer art stories in the Collection

A young woman reclines in the green and grey grounds of an impressive estate in a red dress

Identities, disguises and hidden love stories

artworks, history

To mark February's LGBTQ+ History Month, we're highlighting historical examples in the Collection which illustrate attitudes and perceptions of queer relationships and gender in early modern England.

a view of Newstead Abbey

Body, mind and soul: the making of Lord Byron

artworks, history

On the bicentennial of Greece’s 1821 Revolution and War of Independence, discover Lord Byron through works of art and letters from the Government Art Collection and Newstead Abbey.

Lucien Freud visiting the Government Art Collection in 2011. He is holding a glass of water and looking at his painting in a store room.

A closer look: Lucian Freud’s Welsh Landscape

artists, artworks

In 2008, Lucian Freud came to the headquarters of the Government Art Collection to revisit his work Welsh Landscape, painted between 1939 and 1940.