National Gallery shares art
The gallery is celebrating its 200th birthday.
Home to more than 2,300 paintings, the National Gallery in London turns 200 this year. To celebrate, the National Gallery has organised a year of events, beginning in May. These include sharing paintings from its collection with galleries around the UK.
The Week Junior spoke to Daniel Sobrino Ralston, who looks after the National Gallery’s Spanish paintings. The collection of Spanish paintings features around 60 artworks including portraits of people such as Philip IV (the king of Spain in the 17th century), landscapes and still-life paintings (everyday things).
Ralston has worked on the National Treasures programme, which is taking 12 famous paintings to 12 museums and galleries around the UK. Ralston says that he’s excited that paintings “owned by the public, can be seen across the four nations of the UK”.
The paintings include John Constable’s The Hay Wain, Claude Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond and J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. Ralston explains this will be the first time some of the 12 artworks have left the National Gallery since the organisation got them, so it’s a “very rare opportunity to see these paintings that don’t normally travel”. Across the country the galleries showing the works are putting on events and activities inspired by the paintings.
Another part of the 200th birthday celebrations is a travelling art studio project called Art Road Trip. This is visiting 18 places around the UK over the next 12 months to help and support local communities to get creative and make art. To join in the celebrations, ask an adult to visit the National Gallery website. There you can also see lots of the paintings in the gallery’s collections and find out more about them.