This year, the National Gallery in London is celebrating its 200th anniversary. Initially a small collection, it has now become a cultural icon in the UK, with 2,400 works and millions of visitors annually.
The idea of a National Gallery came about after John Julius Angerstein’s death in 1823. His heirs decided to sell his art collection, which the House of Commons purchased for £57,000 in 1824. This collection formed the foundation of Britain’s national art collection.
The gallery opened in 1838 at Trafalgar Square, and to commemorate its 200th anniversary, NG200, the museum hosted a light show and toured national treasures around the UK. A redisplay of the collection is set for May 2025.
As part of the celebration, here are 20 highlights from the National Gallery collection:
1. The Wilton Diptych, 1395–99
2. Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1470
3. Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1485
4. Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, c. 1506–08
The Wilton Diptych was commissioned by King Richard II for personal prayer. Uccello’s Saint George and the Dragon showcases his mastery of visual perspective. Botticelli’s Venus and Mars depicts Roman gods in a playful narrative. Da Vinci’s drawing is a magical piece from the High Renaissance era.
These works will be on view at the National Gallery, offering visitors a glimpse into the rich history and artistry of this iconic institution. On July 31, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan announced that a special government grant of £350,000 would save Leonardo’s work for the nation, which is now on display in a public collection. The almost tangible warmth between the two women in the painting is contrasted by the lightness of the materials used by Leonardo, giving the impression that the figures could vanish at any moment. Interestingly, before the May rehang, the work can be seen at the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington House from November 9, 2024, to February 16, 2025.
This work will be available for viewing starting in May 2025.
The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck is a masterpiece that showcases sartorial elegance without extravagance. The couple’s clothing is luxurious and trendy, yet not ostentatious. While the setting is highly structured, the informality of some elements suggests that the subjects may have been friends of the artist. The painting is now believed to be a double portrait rather than a wedding scene, and the woman is not pregnant but holding her skirts off the ground.
On view in Room 28.
Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria, on display in Room 26, captures the saint in a state of religious ecstasy. The painting portrays Catherine cloaked in naturalistic robes with her head turned away from her body, embodying the femininity and fragility of the subject. The work will be available for viewing starting November 27, 2024, in Room 26.
Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors features a mysterious object, which is revealed to be a skull when viewed from a specific angle. The painting symbolizes the political unrest of the time through various elements, including scientific instruments and a broken lute string. The work alludes to the religious schism in Europe and includes an anamorphic skull as a memento mori.
On view in Room 12.
Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, painted in the 1550s, is a large mythological painting that showcases Titian’s realism and movement in art. The painting depicts the moment when Actaeon discovers Diana and her nymphs bathing, leading to his tragic fate. The work can be seen in Room 29.
Anthony van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, created around 1638-39, depicts the king on horseback, ready for battle. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill ordered the National Gallery’s collection, including this painting, to be hidden to protect them from bombing. Charles I was a great art patron, and many important works from his collection are now housed in the National Gallery. Returning to the top-secret wartime evacuation of the gallery’s 2,000 works, experts searched the country for a hiding place until they discovered Manod Quarry in Gwynedd, Wales. With a cavernous space covered with hundreds of feet of slate and granite, the mine was nearly impregnable to bombing. However, the Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, measuring 12 by 9.5 feet, was too tall for its carrier truck to navigate around a tight S-bend. The road had to be dug deeper to lower the truck, resulting in a noticeably higher curb in that section.
In Room 21, you can find Johannes Vermeer’s „A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal,“ painted around 1670-72. Vermeer was known as „The Sphinx of Delft,“ a nickname given by art historian Théophile Bürger due to the enigmatic presence of people in his works and his elusive historical figure. This painting, along with its counterpart „A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,“ displays Vermeer’s signature still interiors with aloof characters. These paintings may represent virtue and loyalty in the standing young woman and promiscuity and flirtation in her seated counterpart.
Canaletto’s „A Regatta on the Grand Canal,“ dated around 1740, can be viewed in Room 33. This painting captures a traditional Venetian event, the February regatta celebrating the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin. Canaletto produced many versions of this scene, catering to wealthy tourists on the „grand tour“ of Europe. It served as a perfect souvenir to prove attendance at the event, even if one missed it due to a hangover.
William Hogarth’s „Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête,“ painted around 1743, is part of the National Gallery’s Angerstein collection. This series of six paintings tells a morality tale of the disastrous consequences of marrying for money rather than love. The paintings are rife with symbolism, depicting a husband contracting syphilis and a wife taking a lover, leading to tragic outcomes.
Also in Room 34 is Joseph Wright of Derby’s „An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump,“ painted in 1768. Wright’s painting explores scientific knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment, highlighting the fragility of life. The artwork shows a lecturer conducting an experiment on a bird in front of an aristocratic audience, symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge and the ethical questions surrounding scientific advancements.
Lastly, Thomas Gainsborough’s „Mr. and Mrs. Andrews,“ circa 1750, is displayed in Room 34. Gainsborough, known for his landscape painting, showcases a portrait of a husband and wife. Born in Suffolk and working mainly in London, Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, known for his innovative use of materials like broccoli and coal to create his landscapes. The individuals who are represented in the painting by Gainsborough are the subjects of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, a squire and his wife from Essex. They were depicted under an oak tree where their house’s lawn met their farmland. The unpainted patch in Mrs. Andrew’s lap remains a mystery; some believe it may have been intended for a pheasant shot by her husband, while others think it was left for a baby to be added later on.
The painting by John Constable, „The Hay Wain,“ from 1821, is now back at the National Gallery after being on loan to the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. It portrays an idyllic rural landscape close to where the artist grew up in Suffolk. However, the reality of the English countryside at that time was quite different, with the introduction of steam trains and the replacement of farmworkers with mechanized equipment.
On the other hand, J. M. W. Turner’s painting „Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway“ from 1844 celebrates modernity and the achievement of the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It juxtaposes human technology against nature, symbolized by a hare running ahead of a train. Turner’s work captures the changing landscape of England during that time.
Claude Monet’s painting „Bathers at La Grenouillère“ from 1869 showcases modern society relaxing in the Parisian suburb of La Grenouillère. It is considered a forerunner to the Impressionist movement, with Monet’s innovative use of color and composition setting the stage for future artistic developments.
Georges Seurat’s painting „Bathers at Asnières“ from 1884 introduces the post-Impressionist style of pointillism, where color and light are broken down into separate dots of pigment. Seurat’s experimentation with color mixing in the viewer’s eye creates a scene of impending modernity, with factories in the distance symbolizing industrial progress.
Henri Rousseau’s painting „Surprised!“ from 1891 captures an imaginary scene of a tiger in a lightning storm. Rousseau, a self-taught artist, never traveled outside of France and created his works based on books and visits to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Despite being considered a „Sunday painter,“ his talent was recognized during his lifetime for his unique and imaginative artworks. Es gibt immer etwas Schönes daran, einen Glauben, jeden Glauben, so erbarmungslos ausgedrückt zu sehen. Kürzlich stand im Mittelpunkt eines einmonatigen Kinderprogramms in der Nationalgalerie die Arbeit inspiriert weiterhin und die Frage bleibt, ob der Tiger – der hier so überrascht wirkt wie eine Hauskatze vom Blitz – oder sein beabsichtigtes und außerhalb des Bildschirms befindliches Opfer tatsächlich die überraschte Partei ist?
Auf der Ausstellung im Raum 41.
Vincent van Gogh, Sonnenblumen, 1888
Bildnachweis: Copyright © The National Gallery, London.
Der niederländische Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh malte in nur einer Woche vier Versionen von Sonnenblumen in Erwartung des lang ersehnten Besuchs eines vermeintlichen Freundes, des Malers Paul Gauguin. „Ich male mit dem Elan eines Marseillese, der Bouillabaisse isst“, schrieb Vincent an seinen Bruder Theo. Die gelben Sonnenblumen symbolisieren Glück und stehen für die sonnenverwöhnten Felder der Provence, wo der Künstler lebte, aber die Freude, die dieses Gemälde bringen sollte, wurde für den Künstler durch seine anschließenden Streitereien mit Gauguin zunichte gemacht. Zumindest können wir immer noch schätzen, wie Van Gogh sie in einem Brief an den Maler Émile Bernard im Jahr 1888 beschrieb: „Rohes und zerbrochenes Chromgelb wird auf verschiedenen Hintergründen hervorstrahlen, Blau zwischen hellem Véronèse [smaragdgrün] und königsblau, eingerahmt von dünnen Streifen, die in meinem Orange [Bleirot-Pigment] gemalt sind.“
Auf der Ausstellung im Raum 6.