Illustrated Lecture by Dr Susanna Avery-Quash
This year sees the National Gallery celebrate its Bicentenary. Two centuries on, the national collection is very different in shape and feel from the original one (having started off with a nucleus of just 38 paintings) which opened in a gentleman’s townhouse on Pall Mall. Today, housed in a purpose-built gallery on Trafalgar Square, it contains about 2,400 works and is far broader in its collecting remit, encompassing pictures which narrate the history of western European painting from its origins in mid-13th-century Italy, although thanks to the creation of the Tate Gallery in 1897 it has lost hundreds of British paintings which used to grace its walls. The talk will trace the twists and turns of the growth of the collection; introduce some of the important characters who have made important decisions affecting the collection; and unpick the key criteria concerning acquisitions past and present, with a hint of what the future may hold
© Southampton City Art
Dr Susanna Avery-Quash is Lead Curator at the National Gallery. She is in charge of pre-1900 objects in its Contextual Collection, and responsible for activities associated with its research strands, ‘Buying, Collecting and Display’, ‘Art and Religion’, and the Women and the Arts Forum. Her research focuses on the study of important private and public art collections, trends in artistic taste, and the historical art market. She has published on the first collection of the National Gallery amassed by John Julius Angerstein (1738- 1823) and on the directorship of the Gallery’s first Director, Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865). She was a foundation trustee of The Society for the History of Collecting and The International Art Market Studies Association and is a board member of the Francis Haskell Memorial Fund. She is also a Specialist Volunteer for the National Trust and has held Honorary Research Fellowships at Birkbeck, University of London, and the University of Buckingham’s Humanities Research Institute.
Sat 5 Oct 2024 3.00pm
Little Missenden Village Hall
£12 unreserved
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