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How the Gallery grew around its paintings
The 1838 front, later galleries and the Sainsbury Wing record changing ideas about space, display and public arrival.
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Wilkins gives the collection a home
William Wilkins’s building opened in 1838, fourteen years after the collection began in a Pall Mall house. Its classical front gave the museum a prominent position on the square. The National Gallery initially shared the building with the Royal Academy, which left in 1869. A growing collection and changing expectations soon put pressure on the available space.
Building behind the front
James Pennethorne added a gallery in 1860–61. Edward Middleton Barry’s eight galleries opened in 1876, and John Taylor’s halls, stairs and galleries followed in 1884. The galleries you walk through therefore belong to several campaigns of expansion. Differences in room shape and decoration can help you recognise that history without trying to remember every architect’s name.
A new western wing
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s Sainsbury Wing opened in 1991. It added a major home for earlier paintings beside Wilkins’s building. Compare its classical details with the older front when you return outside. The relationship between the two was a deliberate part of the design.
Changing the welcome
Selldorf Architects with Purcell reworked the wing’s arrival spaces for its public reopening in May 2025. Clearer glazing, larger openings and double-height areas brought more daylight into the foyer. The main entrance now brings visitors through this western end. You experience that architectural history in a practical way each time you move from the square to the stair and then into the paintings.
Photo gallery 1
Image credits
- xiquinhosilva · Central Hall, National Gallery.jpg · CC BY 2.0 · WebP / AVIF
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/bryansjs · Entrance hall of the National Gallery, looking north.jpg · CC BY-SA 2.0 · WebP / AVIF
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/bryansjs · Entrance hall of the National Gallery, looking south.jpg · CC BY-SA 2.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Diego Delso · Bóveda de la sala 36, Galería Nacional, Londres, Inglaterra, 2014-08-11, DD 165-167 HDR.JPG · CC BY-SA 4.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Philafrenzy · National Gallery Sainsbury Wing staircase.jpg · CC0 · WebP / AVIF