The National Gallery in London was established when the British government bought a collection of 38 paintings from the estate of the banker John Julius Angerstein, whose house on Pall Mall housed the first gallery. It later moved to a purpose-built building designed by William Wilkins on the north side of Trafalgar Square. Unlike many European galleries, it did not begin as a royal collection but was built up by purchase and gifts, and entry has long been free. Its holdings of Western European painting from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries include works by Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Turner and Van Gogh.
Before and after
- 1823Origins of rugby union
- 1823Discovery of silicon
- 8 January 1823Birth of Alfred Russel Wallace
- from 31 August 1823 to 29 September 1833Ominous Decade
- 1824Founding of National Gallery
- 1824Founding of University of Manchester
- 1824Joseph Fourier describes the greenhouse effect
- 1824William Buckland describes Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur to be named
- 2 March 1824Birth of Bedřich Smetana
More in Art, literature & culture
- 10 August 1793Construction of Louvre Museum
- from 18th century to 19th centuryRomanticism
- 1 November 1800Construction of White House
- 1886Statue of Liberty
- c. 1900sRise of modernism
- 1907Rise of cubism
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.