The original Queen's Gallery was constructed out of the ruins of the former private chapel (on the west front of Buckingham Palace), which had been gutted by a German bomb on 13 September 1940.

The original building was designed by John Nash as one of the Palace's three identical conservatories or pavilions in the form of Ionic temples. 

It was constructed on the south-west corner of the Palace, facing the garden, and was completed in 1831. The building was converted into a private chapel for Queen Victoria in 1843 but destroyed in an air raid in 1940.

At the suggestion of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, it was redeveloped as a gallery for the Royal Collection in 1962. 

The Queen's Gallery was planned as a small exhibition space open to the public in which changing exhibitions could be mounted to display works of art from all sections of the Royal Collection.

The Gallery was opened to the public on 25 July 1962. In the following decades a succession of exhibitions was mounted, each lasting between a year and eighteen months.

The first was a miscellany of items, entitled Treasures from the Royal Collection. Other exhibitions included displays of works by Leonardo (1969-70), Van Dyck (1968), Canaletto (1980-81); photographs from the Royal Photograph Collection; postage stamps from the Royal Philatelic Collection; and Fabergé items.