Qualla: National Gallery

National Gallery: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most European national galleries began as confiscated palace walls. The Louvre was the French royal collection nationalised in 1793; the Uffizi was the Medici inheritance opened to Florentines in 1789; the Hermitage was Catherine the Great's hoard. London came late to the idea and refused the obvious source. The British Royal Collection still belongs, two centuries later, to the sovereign personally. So in 1824 the British government did something stranger: it bought 38 paintings, in cash, from the heirs of a Russian-born marine insurance underwriter called John Julius Angerstein, and called the result a national gallery. Angerstein's old townhouse at 100 Pall Mall served as the first home. There was no royal collection inside. There was no palace. There was a handful of pictures, free admission, and a determination that anyone could walk in.

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery: Buying a Founding Collection

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0. Britain had nearly bought a national collection three times before. In 1777 the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole put his pictures up for sale. The MP John Wilkes argued in Parliament for the government to buy this 'invaluable treasure' and house it in a gallery built in the Brit...

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Image: Rhododendrites | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery: Trafalgar Square

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alistair Wettin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Construction of the Trafalgar Square building began in 1832 to a design by William Wilkins, on the northern half of the old Royal Mews. The location was political. It sat between the wealthy West End and the poorer streets to the east; Parliament's commission of 1857 declared tha...

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Image: Alistair Wettin | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery: Eastlake and the Italian Hunt

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Piero della Francesca, Public domain. The early gallery was run by trustees with conservative taste and a hopeless purchase grant. Between 1847 and 1850 no acquisitions were made at all. In 1851 a critical House of Commons report demanded a single director with real authority. Sir Charles Lock Eastlake got the job in...

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Image: Piero della Francesca | Public domain

National Gallery: The Manod Quarry

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James F., CC BY 1.0. On 1 September 1939 the paintings began moving out of London. The first hiding places - Penrhyn Castle and the university colleges of Bangor and Aberystwyth in Wales - were not secure enough. When the Battle of France began in 1940, the cabinet discussed shipping the collection t...

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Image: James F. | CC BY 1.0

National Gallery: The Sainsbury Wing and What's Inside

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jan van Eyck, Public domain. In 1982 a competition was held for an extension on the bomb-damaged Hampton's site to the west. The winning design by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek included a tower. The Prince of Wales famously called the proposal 'a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant frie...

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Image: Jan van Eyck | Public domain