The public Art Museum in nineteenth-century Britain: The development of the National Gallery

Abstract

Christopher Whitehead, The public Art Museum in nineteenth-century Britain: The development of the National Gallery. Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0754632369. 290 pp., 25 b. & w. illus. £47.50. In contrast to the excellent historical accounts of the development of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery remains woefully neglected. Christopher Whitehead's book is therefore particularly valuable, not least because the period it covers (1850–76) is one of the most fascinating in the Gallery's history. Founded by Parliament in 1824 it was administered during the first thirty years by a body of Trustees who included the leading politicians of the day. The Gallery's management and acquisitions policy married that Seicento-fixated taste which had earlier been enshrined in the British Institution with a more modern commitment that fine art and art appreciation should be available, free, to all classes. The Napoleonic Wars had forged...

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