Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, Ballet Dancers, 1888, pastel on paper on board, 62.6 x 70.8cm, accepted by HM Government in Lieu of inheritance tax (under a hybrid agreement) from the estate of Mrs Ann Marks and allocated to the gallery, bought with support of the National Gallery Trust, 2025
NEAR Leonardo da Vinci’s magnificent Virgin of the Rocks, now hanging in the remodelled and reopened Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, is a wall note, also new.
The wing holds the “Medieval and Early Renaissance” works, but the notice, headed The Wonder of Art: What Painting Can Do, goes further.
Painting, it says, came of age during that time, from the 13th to early 16th centuries, moving from manuscript illustration to images on panel and canvas: “Painting’s rise in status was due to all the things it can do. It can tell complex stories, convey human emotions, fool the eye, capture a likeness, make viewers laugh, weep, pray and think.”
The Sainsbury Wing is now the gallery’s main entrance – WC2N 5DN – from Trafalgar Square and is a more welcoming and user-friendly experience for any visitor to the great national collection.
Here a 12-metre screen can show in spectacular and close-up detail some of the vast range of works to be seen in the collection.
Room 34, The National Gallery, Distinct Style: British Painting 1740-1800, Part of C C Land: The Wonder of Art, view south into Room 33: City of Pleasure: Painting in Venice 1700-1800 [© The National Gallery, London]
And the National Gallery’s admission-free offering comprises over 1,000 artworks, nearly half of its total of pieces, and loans, on display which, marking the end of its bicentenary year, has undergone a comprehensive rehang.
Its director Sir Gabriele Finaldi (pictured), said: “…millions of visitors will be welcomed into the newly configured and subtly refurbished spaces, double height and brightly lit, and en route to exploring the gallery’s superb painting collection from Giotto to Monet.”
The rehang – C C Land: The Wonder of Art – (after backers Hong Kong-based property investor CC Land Holdings) has been years in the making.
It follows a chronological arrangement showing the collection treasures which trace the development of painting “in the Western European tradition” through to the 20th century.
A progression through Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo to Romanticism, and Towards Modernism (after 1800) there’s a coherent narrative.
But also surprises.
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Christine Riding, director of collections and research, who led the rehang, said: “This is the first time in over 30 years that we have had such an exciting opportunity to rethink, and refresh, how we present one of the greatest art collections in the world, under one roof. Our visitors will discover anew some of the most famous and iconic works of art ever created, alongside personal favourites and recent discoveries and acquisitions.”
There is a clear emphasis on the importance of the sightlines, with chosen works given particular prominence, whether Stubbs’s large racehorse Whistlejacket (see above) or Renoir’s umbrellas.
How artists have influenced and been influenced by other artists is also addressed in a more direct way.
Among the new juxtapositions, in a relatively small Room 40, we see three Turners and three Constables including The Fighting Temeraire and The Hay Wain opposite each other and hanging there, too, Corot’s series The Four Times of Day, his morning, noon, evening, and night landscapes.
Elsewhere individuals, such as Titian and Monet, now have rooms of their own.
In addition outstanding new acquisitions have been announced, among them a Degas pastel, Ballet Dancers from 1888 and A View of the Sky from a Prison Window, 1823, by Carl Gustav Carus, the first work by the German Romantic painter to enter a UK public collection.
Details: nationalgallery.org.uk
