The National Gallery
London, United Kingdom
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in central London, founded in 1824 when the British government purchased the collection of the banker John Julius Angerstein. Its main building, with a neoclassical facade by William Wilkins, opened on the present site in 1838 and has been extended several times, most notably by the Sainsbury Wing of 1991.
The gallery houses the national collection of Western European painting from the thirteenth to the early twentieth centuries, with works by artists such as van Eyck, Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt and Turner. It holds two paintings attributed to Johannes Vermeer, A Lady Seated at a Virginal and A Lady Standing at a Virginal, thought to be among his last works.
