NATIONAL GALLERY, The, the Brit ish national art gallery; a collection of paint ings, in Trafalgar Square, London. It orig inated in a collection formed by Mr. Anger stein, consisting of 38 pictures, 29 by old masters and 9 by British painters, and purchased with public funds in 1824 for $280,000 as the nucleus of a national gallery. Since that time the col lection has been greatly enlarged by purchases out of funds provided by Parliament, as well as by bequests and gifts. Of the latter the most munificent has been that of Mr. Vernon in 1847, a collection of 157 works of English painters. Another highly valuable section is that of the pictures and drawings by Turner bequeathed to the nation at his death in 1856. In 1871 a valu able prize was secured by the purchase for $375,000 of Sir Robert Peel's collection, con sisting of 77 paintings and 18 drawings. In 1885 Parliament voted $350,000 for the purchase of a single picture, the 'Ansidei Raphael,' together with $87,500 for another, Van Dyck's 'Charles I on Horseback.) The National Gallery now
comprises over 1,200 pictures and though spe cially strong in examples of the British school of painting, foreign masters are fully repre sented. The various early and late Italian schools are extensively illustrated ; there are good examples of the chief representatives of Italian art, as Raphael, Correggio, Paul Veronese. There are also good examples of Murillo and Velasquez and the Spanish school. and the great Dutch and Flemish painters, Rem brandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, etc., are well repre sented. The original building of the National Gallery dates from 1838 but has since had ad ditions to accommodate the increasing collection.