Art Galleries in Hampstead Worth Your Time

Hampstead has always attracted artists — Constable, Hepworth, Nicholson, Freud — and the neighbourhood's gallery culture reflects that legacy. Here's where to look at art properly.

Kenwood House

The Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House contains one of the finest small collections of Old Master paintings in Britain, all permanently on free display. The collection includes Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Two Circles (c.1665–9), widely considered one of the greatest portraits ever painted; Vermeer's The Guitar Player; Gainsborough's Mary, Countess Howe; and works by Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Turner. The house itself — remodelled by Robert Adam in the 1760s — is among the finest in London. Open daily; admission free. Reach it via the Heath or by bus 210.

Burgh House & Hampstead Museum

This 1703 Queen Anne house on New End Square contains a permanent collection focused on Hampstead's artistic history — Constable's cloud studies, drawings and paintings by the artists who lived here, and a recreation of Helen Allingham's studio. The temporary exhibition programme is varied and often excellent. Free admission; the downstairs café is a good stop for tea and cake.

The Freud Museum

Not strictly a gallery, but the Freud Museum on Maresfield Gardens houses Sigmund Freud's extraordinary collection of antiquities — Greek, Roman, Egyptian — arranged exactly as he left them in 1939. The collection gives an unexpected dimension to Freud's intellectual world. His famous couch is here. There are regular temporary exhibitions relating to psychoanalysis and art. Admission charged.

Contemporary Galleries

Tooks Court Gallery on Flask Walk shows contemporary British painting and photography, with a programme of six or seven exhibitions a year. The Pie Factory in Belsize Park has been a space for emerging artists for over a decade. New End Gallery on New End Square shows mostly local artists and is worth a look on any walk through the village.

Open Studios

The annual Camden Arts Festival (usually May) opens studios across the area, giving access to working artists' spaces that are normally private. It's the best way to see the full range of artistic activity in the neighbourhood — from established painters in Georgian studios to emerging printmakers in converted outbuildings.