Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
National Gallery
Trafalgar Square • Daily 10am-6pm, Fri till 9pm • Free •
T
020 7747 2885,
W
nationalgallery.org.uk •
!
Charing Cross
Taking up the entire north side of Trafalgar Square, the sprawling Neoclassical hulk
of the
National Gallery
houses one of the world's greatest art collections. Unlike the
Louvre or the Hermitage, the National Gallery is not based on a former royal
collection, but was begun as late as 1824 when the government reluctantly agreed to
purchase 38 paintings belonging to a Russian émigré banker, John Julius Angerstein.
The collection was originally put on public display at Angerstein's old residence, on
Pall Mall, until today's purpose-built edifice was completed in 1838. A hostile press
dubbed the gallery's diminutive dome and cupolas “pepperpots”, and poured abuse on
the Greek Revival architect, William Wilkins, who retreated into early retirement and
died a year later.
The gallery now boasts a collection of more than 2300 paintings, whose virtue is
not so much its size as its range, depth and quality. Among the thousand paintings
on permanent display are
Italian masterpieces
by the likes of Botticelli, Leonardo and
Michelangelo, dazzling pieces by Velázquez and Goya and an array of
Rembrandt
paintings that features some of his most searching portraits. In addition, the gallery
has a particularly strong showing of
Impressionists
, with paintings by Monet, Degas,
Van Gogh and Cézanne, plus several early Picassos. There are also showpieces by
Turner, Reynolds and Gainsborough, but for a wider range of British art, head for
Tate Britain (see p.60).
Special exhibitions
are held in the basement of the Sainsbury
Wing and usually charge admission.
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Arrival
There are four
entrances to the National Gallery:
Wilkins' original Portico Entrance up the steps from Trafalgar
Square, the Getty Entrance on the ground floor to the east,
the Sainsbury Wing to the west and the back entrance on
Orange St. The Getty Entrance and the Sainsbury Wing both
have an information desk, where you can buy a floorplan,
and disabled access, with lifts to all floors.
Tours
Audioguides (£3.50) are available - much better,
though, are the gallery's free guided tours, which set off
1
from the Sainsbury Wing foyer (daily 11.30am & 2.30pm,
plus Fri 7pm; 1hr).
Eating
By the Getty Entrance is the
National Café
(Mon-Fri
8am-11pm, Sat 10am-11pm, Sun 10am-6pm), which has
a self-service area, and a large brasserie, with an entrance
on St Martin's Place. More formal dining is available at the
National Dining Rooms
, serving excellent British cuisine, in
the Sainsbury Wing (
T
020 7747 2525), with views over
Trafalgar Square.
The Sainsbury Wing
The original design for the gallery's modern
Sainsbury Wing
was dubbed by Prince
Charles “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. So
instead, the American husband-and-wife team of Venturi and Scott-Brown were
commissioned to produce a softly-softly, postmodern adjunct, which playfully imitates
elements of William Wilkins' Neoclassicism and even Nelson's Column and, most
importantly, got the approval of Prince Charles, who laid the foundation stone in 1988.
Chronologically the gallery's collection begins in this wing, which houses the
National's oldest paintings from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, mostly early
Italian Renaissance masterpieces, with a smattering of early Dutch, Flemish and
German works.
Giotto to Van Eyck
The gallery's earliest works by
Giotto
, “the father of modern painting”, and
Duccio
,
a Sienese contemporary, are displayed in room 52. So too, in a “side chapel” is the
“Leonardo Cartoon” - a preparatory drawing for a painting which, like so many of
Leonardo's projects, was never completed. The cartoon was known only to scholars
until the gallery bought it for £800,000 in the mid-1960s. In 1987, it gained further
notoriety when an ex-soldier blasted the work with a sawn-off shotgun in protest at the
political status quo.
