Sights of London

National Gallery (London), one of the principal art galleries in Britain and among the most important in the world, located in Trafalgar Square, and opened in 1838. The gallery, in Greek Revival style, was designed by William Wilkins and built in 1833-1887. It was later enlarged by the addition of the Sainsbury Wing, financed by members of the Sainsbury family (founders of the British supermarket chain) and designed by Robert Venturi. The new wing opened in 1991.

The idea of establishing a national gallery grew out of concern for protecting Britain�s artistic heritage, threatened by the sale of Sir Robert Walpole�s collection to Catherine of Russia. The national collection grew from paintings presented to the nation in 1823 by collector and connoisseur Sir George Beaumont, and a government purchase in 1824 of 38 works from the collection of merchant John Julius Angerstein, in whose house in Pall Mall they were initially displayed.

The National Gallery now has over 2000 works representing the principal schools of European painting from the 13th century to 20th century. Its collection of Italian Renaisssance paintings, displayed in the Sainsbury Wing, represents almost all the great Florentine and Venetian painters of that period and is the most comprehensive outside Italy. Dutch and Flemish painters are also strongly represented, as are French and Spanish painters of the 15th century to 19th century.

Notable works include The Arnolfini Marrriage, by Jan van Eyck; Venus and Mars, by Botticelli; the Leonardo Cartoon (a preparatory drawing that Leonardo da Vinci executed for The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John); A Young Woman Standing by a Virginal, by Jan Vermeer; Woman Taken in Adultery, by Rembrandt; The Judgment of Paris, by Rubens; Portrait of a Man, by Titian; The Emtombment, by Michelangelo; The Rokeby Venus, by Velazquez; and Les Parapluies, by Renoir.