Global InformationNational Gallery information
 | |
 Trafalgar Square façade | |
  Location within Central London | |
| Established | 1824 current location since 1838 |
|---|---|
| Location | Trafalgar Square, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°30′32″N 0°7′42″W / 51.50889°N 0.12833°W |
| Type | Art museum |
| Visitors | 3,096,508 (2023)[1] |
| Director | Gabriele Finaldi |
| Public transit access |  Charing Cross Charing CrossDetailed information below |
| Website | www |
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, in it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.[note 1] The current director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi.
The National Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.[2] Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, and entry to the main collection is free of charge.
Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase, the gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, especially Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds of the collection.[3] The collection is smaller than many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne"[4] are represented with important works. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition,[5] but this is no longer the case.
The present building, the third site to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins. Building began in 1832 and it opened to the public in 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins's building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, a 1991 extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a significant example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain.
- ^ "British Museum is the most-visited UK attraction again". BBC News. 18 March 2024. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
- ^ "Constitution". The National Gallery. Archived from the original on 6 April 2010.
- ^ Gentili, Barcham & Whiteley 2000, p. 7.
- ^ Chilvers, Ian (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford Oxford University Press, p. 413. The formula was used by Michael Levey, later the gallery's eleventh director, for the title of a popular survey of European painting: Levey, Michael (1972). From Giotto to Cézanne: A Concise History of Painting. London: Thames and Hudson
- ^ Potterton 1977, p. 8.
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