National Gallery, the principal depository of the pictures belonging to the British nation. The present building, which was intended to accommodate the Royal Academy and National Gallery, stands in Trafalgar Square, London, and was finished in 1838 at a cost of £100,000, but was enlarged in 1861, in 1869, in 1876, and in 1887. The nucleus of the National Gallery was the Angerstein collection of thirty-eight pictures, purchased in 1824 for £57,000, and a considerable sum is now annually voted by parliament for the purpose of adding to it, the estimates for 1889-90 showing an expenditure of £14,487. The collection is most valuable to the student of art, and occupies more than twenty-two rooms. The various early and late Italian schools are extensively illustrated; there are good examples of the chief representatives of Italian art, as Raphael, Correggio, Paul Veronese. There are a few good examples of Murillo and Velasquez and the Spanish school; and the great Dutch and Flemish painters, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, and the others, are well represented. The last extensive bequest in the department of the 'foreign schools' was that of Mr Wynn Ellis in 1876, comprising ninety-four pictures. In the department of the 'British and modern schools' the largest additions as yet made by private munificence are the gift of Mr Robert Vernon in 1847, consisting of 157 pictures, and the bequest of Joseph M. W. Turner, R.A., in 1856, embracing 105 works in oil and an immense number in water-colours and pencil by his own hand. The entire collection now consists of over 1280 pictures. There are catalogues to the Gallery by Blackburn (1877, 1879), E. T. Cook (3d ed. 1890), and others, and the Pall Mall's Half-holidays at the National Gallery (1890). The Royal Academy of Arts, which used to have its headquarters here, is now established at Burlington House.
The NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, founded in 1856, was established at South Kensington in 1869, but removed on loan to the Bethnal Green Museum in 1885. Hence it was finally transferred in 1896, to occupy a handsome suite of buildings erected for it at the rear of the National Gallery. There is an admirable catalogue by the first director, Sir George Scharf, K.C.B. (1820-95).
There are also National Galleries of Art in Edinburgh and Dublin; the great public collections of Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Florence, Rome, &c. are mentioned in the articles on those cities.