The chance to celebrate the 200th birthday of a treasured institution comes around fairly rarely. But today, in the very heart of London, the champagne corks will be popping as the National Gallery, one of Britain’s great cultural jewels, hits that venerable age.
It will put on a Big Weekend of celebrations, kicked off by a spectacular illumination show projected onto the front of the famous neo-classical building in Trafalgar Square from 9pm tonight. There will also be concerts — masterminded by Jools Holland — workshops, talks and tours, as well as tales from the gallery’s storied history.
Gabriele Finaldi is the National Gallery director who sees in the 200. “It’s an enormous privilege to be part of the generation that crosses the threshold into its third century,” he says. “It’s not like any year; the bicentenary has galvanised people’s affection for the gallery and their generosity towards it.” He adds, with a laugh: “We’d stretch the birthday celebrations to 200 years if we could.”
Over the past two centuries, more than 300 million people have come to see some of the most recognisable paintings in the history of art. Today they come from all over the world to experience the joys of work by masters from Leonardo to Turner, Raphael to Van Gogh, Constable to Botticelli.
It may have a global appeal but its importance to London and its inhabitants is at its core. Finaldi, 59, says: “For Londoners, many of us were brought up with the National Gallery; we felt it was ours and it has become a part of the fibre of our lives… It’s embedded in this history of this country and the history of London.”
And it’s not just the National Gallery, he adds. “London brings people in; its cultural biosphere is unequalled. Just talking about collections — not theatre and music and other things — there is a richness of world culture here, in the care of professionals to share with the public for close on two centuries. It’s not the same in Paris, Rome or Madrid.”
Finaldi says the gallery is in good health but “the bicentenary gives us the opportunity to be an even better museum”. This includes the major building works with the privately funded £85 million refurbishment of the Sainsbury Wing, which will open next spring to mark the end of the bicentenary celebrations.
Everyone has their favourite works. In a film released to coincide with the 200th birthday, Sir Michael Palin picked a work by Turner, Claudia Winkleman went for Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks and Princess Eugenie went with The Madonna of the Basket by Correggio.
Today, Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers is the biggest draw in the gallery, and it sells the most merchandise in the shop, a relatively recent development Finaldi says. When he started as a curator at the National Gallery in 1992, The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner and Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks were the biggest draws.
The gallery is also busy overhauling its research and education centres and building a network of partners up and down the country.
“We’ve received this from previous generations and it’s our job to ensure we hand the gallery on in a better state than we found it,” Finaldi says. “With new acquisitions, new understanding of what the gallery is about… and if we’ve done that, we’ve done a lot.”
While the museum is not back up to its peak of more than six million visitors a year before the pandemic, it rose 14 per cent last year to more than three million. “In a way it’s good not to have those figures right now, because a third of our estate is shut. I mean, look at the gallery,” Finaldi says.
We’re wandering around on a Thursday afternoon and it is heaving. Packed with tourists, locals, day trippers, families, and kids on school trips.
The gallery traces its roots back to 1824 when, under pressure from art activists keen for Britain to establish a national collection, the government bought works owned by London businessman John Julius Angerstein.
Those first 38 pictures were displayed in Angerstein’s house at 100 Pall Mall, but as the collection grew, a new, bigger location was needed and the gallery moved to its current site in 1838.
It was felt that at the location, and with a commitment to free admission, it could be enjoyed by all classes in society. Finaldi says: “Lots of other countries were doing it, and it was felt that this as the capital of an empire it needed a distinguished art institution to beautify the city. But also it was a place of education, where British society could mingle peacefully.”
The gallery expanded over the years with new wings and rooms added —most recently the Sainsbury Wing, which opened in 1991. It also suffered bomb damage during the Blitz. The total floor area is now equivalent to about six football pitches. The National Gallery’s remit is to cover European painting from medieval times to the beginning of the 20th century (the latest picture dates to the Twenties).
As a director of a collection of historical works, Finaldi is aware, however, that he must ensure it’s a living museum and not a mausoleum.
“In a sense, while these works are rooted in a moment of history, we as a society, consider them important, so they’ve remained relevant. They continue to be talked about, researched and copied and inspire contemporary artists.” It’s clear interest isn’t waning yet, not just from the crowd but the glitzy summer party it’s started throwing: last year attracting Maya Jama, Grayson Perry and Bella Freud, though it is on ice this year, superceded by the birthday celebrations.
When the gallery fully reopens it will rehang its collection, just as Tate Britain did in 2023, giving it a chance to tell different stories and give prominence to different painters. Finaldi says that around the lack of diversity in the collection, there is more scholarshipunderway to rethink what stories the gallery tells especially around under-represented groups.
Another part of the director’s job in 2024 is protecting the collection, after protesters attacked works including The Hay Wain, Sunflowers and the Rokeby Venus. Keeping them safe, he says, is a huge challenge. “It’s always shocking news when you hear a picture has been attacked,” Finaldi told the BBC recently. “I’m angry about the protestors because they’re damaging something that is valuable to all of us.”
Another challenge is around education and the threat of declining school trips. He hopes culture will become more embedded in the school curriculum. “Maths and sciences and literacy are crucial, but for us to be complete human beings we need the nourishment of history, of beauty and music. Museums are places where all this can happen.
“It’s not just about history of art, it’s about understanding how society functioned, and how people in history dealt with things we all deal with now — whether it’s death or love, family or faith. Most things are represented in our works, and it’s up to us to find ways to make them all come alive.”
And even classical artists go in and out of fashion. Caravaggio is now a blockbuster draw but that only changed in the past 70 years, and of course there’s Van Gogh, who never sold a work in his lifetime. “Over the past 30 years, Van Gogh has become a bulldozer that dominates everything, and Sunflowers has become a talismanic picture for us. He wanted to paint something joyous, uplifting and signifying friendship. It continues to do that a century and a bit on.”
There are about 2,400 paintings in the National Gallery’s collection, and when the whole gallery reopens next spring, it will be able to put about 1,000 of them on display. “It’s a small collection — I worked at the Prado, which has 8,000, the Louvre has that sort of number, and the Tate has more than us. You’re never going to get on more than half of the collection on display. On the one hand we’re a very small collection, but it’s a massive proportion of our collection that’s on display.”
Finaldi walks the halls of the gallery every day, something he learned from former National Galley and British Museum director Neil MacGregor.
“He said that was the best way to keep in touch with what’s going on in the gallery, to have a sense of how the public is responding to the collection. To allow the room wardens to tell you things if they need to and also revive your spirits at the end of the day. You realise this is what it’s all about.”
He clearly still gets a thrill from it all. “The National Gallery is like a beautiful, jewelled treasure chest, which you open up and it becomes much bigger than you first thought it was. Every picture is a discovery if you just give it time.”
