National Gallery

About National Gallery

Art museum in London, England, UK

The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster in central London, founded in 1824 and housing more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900, the British national collection of Western European painting. Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe such as the Louvre or the Prado, it was not formed by nationalising a royal collection but came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of the insurance broker and patron John Julius Angerstein in 1824; it was then shaped mainly by its early directors, especially Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds of the collection. Smaller than many European national galleries, the collection is encyclopaedic in scope, representing most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne" with important works. The present building, the third to house the gallery, was designed by William Wilkins; construction began in 1832 and it opened to the public in 1838. Only the facade on Trafalgar Square survives unchanged from that time after successive extensions, the latest the Sainsbury Wing to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, a notable example of postmodern architecture in Britain, while lack of space led to the creation of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The gallery is an exempt charity and a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; its collection is held in trust for the British public, and entry to the main collection is free. Among its most celebrated works are Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Constable's The Hay Wain, alongside paintings by Leonardo, Van Eyck, Turner and Monet, and Wikivoyage calls it a truly awe-inspiring collection.

Where:

London, United Kingdom