London - National Gallery

The National Gallery possesses one of the most valuable and comprehensive collections of pictures in the world. The building in which they are housed was designed by William Wilkins and was completed in 1838. From the terrace there is a view of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall. Outside the building stands the monument of James II as a Roman emperor by Grinling Gibbons (1686) with the inscription "King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland" as well as a bronze replica of the Washington statue by Houdon in Richmond, Virginia. The gallery was founded in 1824 when Parliament voted £57,000 for the purchase of 38 pictures from the famous Angerstein collection which were first seen in the Angerstein rooms at 100 Pall Mall. Numerous later purchases and donations made it necessary to enlarge the building in 1876 when the dome was added and further extensions were made in 1887, 1927 and 1929. In 1952 the entrance vestibules were decorated with mosaics by Boris Anrep. In recent years a new annex has provided much-needed additional display space, and in 1991 the Sainsbury Wing was opened. This is a Neo-Classical building by the American architects Venturi Scott-Brown Associates, donated by the Sainsbury brothers. The collections of the National Gallery offer an almost complete cross-section of European painting from c. 1260 until 1920. The greatest treasures are the collection of Dutch masters and the Italian schools of the 15th and 16th centuries. With the opening of the Sainsbury Wing the opportunity has been taken to reorganize all the rooms and gradually separation into national schools is being abandoned and more emphasis placed on comparison and connections within periods.