Buckingham Palace’s Royal Picture Gallery Revives the Salon-Style Hang, Doubling the Number of Masterpieces on View

Charles III reportedly had a say in the stylistic switch, which rearranged and added artworks by the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer and Van Dyck

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

July 16, 2026 2:13 p.m.

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Buckingham Palace’s State Rooms, which are open to the public July through September, are looking a little bit more crowded than usual this summer after designers last week debuted the gallery’s most significant refresh in years—a throwback to an earlier era.

Artworks in the royal picture gallery are now presented in a salon-style display—a maximalist method that stacks paintings vertically and horizontally, making full use of wall space—bringing the number of paintings on view from 63 to 120.

The overhaul took an estimated 875 hours as curators looked to old watercolors, architectural blueprints, photographs and inventories to recreate how the room looked years ago when salon-style hangs were in vogue. The rehang is coupled with a new emerald-green silk damask backdrop and redesigned lighting, which allow the paintings and their golden frames to really stand out.

“This re-hang is an exciting and rare opportunity to significantly increase the number of world-class paintings on display for visitors, in line with our charitable aim to share as much of the Royal Collection as possible,” Anna Reynolds, surveyor of The King’s Pictures, says in a statement. “It continues the longstanding tradition of renovations and re-hangs in the Picture Gallery that have commonly taken place following a change of reign, and we are delighted to be able to share it with as many people as possible this summer.”

The greater volume of works means new paintings can be shown, and those already on display rearranged. Five paintings by Rembrandt and one attributed to his studio are now placed together. Seven works by Peter Paul Rubens are also adjacent to each other, with the artist’s own self-portrait newly hung beside his portrait of painter Anthony Van Dyck. Other artworks include Johan Zoffany’s The Tribuna of the Uffizi, Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Man and Titian’s Madonna and Christ Child.

Charles III himself vouched for the new design, the Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke reports.

The salon-style hang gained popularity in the 1600s, according to Alexandra Morrison writing for the Museum of Modern Art in 2024. The French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture started organizing an annual exhibition in 1667 in the Louvre’s Salon Carré, or the Salon for short, which fed into the Grande Galerie, whose walls were jam-packed with submitted artworks.

When used in a museum, this dense style of display allows curators to showcase many artworks at a time and create an immersive experience. And when used in a personal home, the format “creates so much interest,” interior designer Kelly Wearstler told the New York Times’ Tim McKeough in 2024. “It creates a real focal point and warmth in a room, and it says so much about you, as an extension of your style.”

The logistics of the busy layout are tricky to navigate, with the placement of each painting requiring careful consideration. Historically, paintings have been hung based on their perceived prestige and relevance to the viewer.

“Certain locations were clearly more desirable than others,” Timothy Corrigan, a Los Angeles-based interior designer, told Christie’s in 2024. “In this hierarchical arrangement, the most important paintings were hung at eye level, or ‘on the line,’ while lesser-known artists’ works were positioned higher, or ‘skied.’”

The style started to fall out of favor in the 20th century and was hard to find by the 1960s as more minimalist approaches to presenting art gained popularity. Leaving the so-called clutter of the salon-style behind, curators started disaplying paintings “as clearly and objectively as research specimens in a science lab,” Brian O’Doherty, an art critic, once wrote, according to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In recent years, though, the vintage look has resurfaced. Both Tate Britain and England’s National Portrait Gallery have revived the salon-hang in nods to the not-too-distant past, according to ArtNet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred.

Buckingham Palace’s Picture Gallery will be open to the public until September 27.

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.