Stories ·
People behind the Gallery
Meet the collectors, architects and organisers whose names help explain the museum you are visiting.
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John Julius Angerstein · The first collection
A financier and collector whose 38 paintings were bought by Parliament in 1824. They first went on public display in his former Pall Mall home. His wealth included insurance linked to the slave economy, and he acted as a trustee for estates and enslaved people. Why London has this collection explains those documented connections and their limits.
Sir George Beaumont · An early gift
A collector and amateur painter who promised his pictures to the nation in 1823 and made the gift in 1826. His donation enlarged the new Gallery and helped establish giving as a way for the public collection to grow.
Charles Eastlake · A director and painter
Eastlake became the Gallery’s first director in 1855. His work in collecting helped broaden the range of paintings available for study and display. Buying pictures required choices about which artists and periods the national collection should represent.
William Wilkins · The Trafalgar Square building
The architect of the Gallery that opened in 1838. Its classical frontage remains the public face of a building later expanded by other architects. You can compare it with the Sainsbury Wing from the square.
Edward Middleton Barry · More space for paintings
The architect whose eight new galleries opened in 1876. His work belongs to the expansion behind the older front, followed by John Taylor’s halls, stairs and galleries in 1884.
Myra Hess and Kenneth Clark · Music during war
Hess was the pianist who proposed concerts in the Gallery after its paintings were evacuated in 1939. Clark was the director who supported the plan. Their work gave Londoners public music in a museum emptied by war.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown · The Sainsbury Wing
The architects of the wing that opened in 1991. They designed a new neighbour to the Wilkins building, responding to its classical frontage while giving the earlier paintings their own sequence of galleries.
Annabelle Selldorf and Purcell · A changed welcome
Selldorf Architects worked with Purcell on the Sainsbury Wing’s redesigned arrival and visitor spaces. The 2025 reopening brought clearer glazing, more daylight and a changed main entrance for the collection.
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