Sir Lionel Henry Cust, KCVO FSA (25 January 1859 – 12 October 1929) was an English art historian and museum director. He was director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1895 to 1909 and co-edited The Burlington Magazine from 1909 to 1919.
Cust was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge.[1] In 1884 he joined the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, at the suggestion of the Keeper Sidney Colvin. Unusually for a British scholar of his time, Cust had a predilection for the artistic schools of Northern Europe, not those of Italy. He compiled two catalogues of works on paper in the British Museum collection, in 1893 and 1896.
In 1895 he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery, succeeding the founding director, Sir George Scharf. In the Portrait Gallery Cust's two strongest interests, in art and British nobility, converged. Cust was of aristocratic stock himself and his obituary in The Times described him as a "walking genealogy". During Cust's directorship the Gallery moved to its current premises on St Martin's Place in London.
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| Preceded by Sir John Charles Robinson |
Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures 1901 – 1927 |
Succeeded by Sir Collins Baker |
| Succeeded by Sir Cecil Harcourt-Smith as Surveyor of the Queen's Works of Art |
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