The MP John Wilkes argued for the government to buy this "invaluable treasure" and suggested that it be housed in "a noble gallery... to be built in the spacious garden of the British Museum".

In 1799, the dealer Noël Desenfans offered a ready-made national collection to the British government; he and his partner Sir Francis Bourgeois had assembled it for the king of Poland, before the Third Partition in 1795 abolished Polish independence.

[11] One of the Institution's founding members, Sir George Beaumont, Bt, would eventually play a major role in the National Gallery's foundation by offering a gift of 16 paintings.

Angerstein was a Russian-born émigré banker based in London; his collection numbered 38 paintings, including works by Raphael and Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode series.

[16] The argument that the collection could be accessed by people of all social classes outstripped other concerns, such as the pollution of central London or the failings of Wilkins's building, when the prospect of a move to South Kensington was mooted in the 1850s.

[17] 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings were at the core of the National Gallery and for the first 30 years of its existence the trustees' independent acquisitions were mainly limited to works by High Renaissance masters.

However, the man preferred for the job by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, was the Keeper of Paintings at the gallery, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake.

His ultimate aim, however, was for them to enter the National Gallery; this was duly arranged upon his death by his friend and successor as director, William Boxall, and his widow Lady Elizabeth Eastlake.

The first cleaning operation at the National Gallery began in 1844 after Eastlake's appointment as Keeper, and was the subject of attacks in the press after the first three paintings to receive the treatment – a Rubens, a Cuyp and a Velázquez – were unveiled to the public in 1846.

Although eagerly accepted by the director Charles Holroyd, they were received with extreme hostility by the trustees; Lord Redesdale wrote that "I would as soon expect to hear of a Mormon service being conducted in St. Paul's Cathedral as to see the exhibition of the works of the modern French Art-rebels in the sacred precincts of Trafalgar Square".

[34] In the seclusion afforded by the paintings' new location, the Keeper (and future director) Martin Davies began to compile scholarly catalogues on the collection, with assistance of the gallery's library which was also stored in the quarry.

[21] For the course of the war Myra Hess and other musicians, such as Moura Lympany, gave daily lunch-time recitals in the empty building in Trafalgar Square, to raise public morale as every concert hall in London was closed.

The art critic Herbert Read, writing that year, called the National Gallery "a defiant outpost of culture right in the middle of a bombed and shattered metropolis".

[45] In other respects, however, Victorian tastes were rehabilitated: the building's interiors were no longer considered an embarrassment and were restored, and in 1999 the gallery accepted a bequest of 26 Italian Baroque paintings from Sir Denis Mahon.

The National Gallery is now largely priced out of the market for Old Master paintings and can only make such acquisitions with the backing of major public appeals; the departing director Charles Saumarez Smith expressed his frustration at this situation in 2007.

[60] Economic recession prevented this scheme from being built, but a competition for the Mews site was eventually held in 1831, for which Nash submitted a design with Charles Robert Cockerell as his co-architect.

These had to incorporate columns from the demolished Carlton House, and their relative shortness resulted in an elevation that was deemed excessively low, thus failing to provide Trafalgar Square with its desired commanding focal point to the north.

[64] Two years before completion, its infamous "pepperpot" elevation appeared on the frontispiece of Contrasts (1836), an influential tract by the Gothicist Augustus Pugin, as an example of the degeneracy of the classical style.

[66] The twentieth-century architectural historian Sir John Summerson echoed these early criticisms when he compared the arrangement of a dome and two diminutive turrets on the roofline to "the clock and vases on a mantelpiece, only less useful".

[61][note 5] Sir Charles Barry's landscaping of Trafalgar Square, from 1840, included a north terrace so that the building would appear to be raised, thus addressing one of the points of complaint.

[67] Unsurprisingly, several attempts were made either to completely remodel the National Gallery (as suggested by Sir Charles Barry in 1853), or to move it to more capacious premises in Kensington, where the air was also cleaner.

Though it compensated for the underwhelming architecture of the Wilkins building, Barry's new wing was disliked by Gallery staff, who considered its monumental aspect to be in conflict with its function as exhibition space.

[71] The central mosaic depicting The Awakening of the Muses includes portraits of Virginia Woolf and Greta Garbo, subverting the high moral tone of its Victorian forebears.

In the older rooms, the original classical details were effaced by partitions, daises and suspended ceilings, the aim being to create neutral settings which did not distract from contemplation of the paintings.

[47] The most important addition to the building in the late 20th century was the Sainsbury Wing, designed by the postmodernist architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to house the collection of Renaissance paintings and built in 1991.

The gallery had long sought expansion into this space[citation needed] and in 1982 a competition was held to find a suitable architect; the shortlist included a radical high-tech proposal by Richard Rogers, among others.

This axis is exaggerated by the use of false perspective, as the columns flanking each opening gradually diminish in size until the visitor reaches the focal point (as of 2009), an altarpiece by Cima of The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.

[needs update] Venturi's postmodernist approach to architecture is in full evidence at the Sainsbury Wing, with its stylistic quotations from buildings as disparate as the clubhouses on Pall Mall, the Scala Regia in the Vatican, Victorian warehouses and Ancient Egyptian temples.

[84] In the National Gallery on 10 March 1914, Velázquez's Rokeby Venus was damaged by Mary Richardson, a campaigner for women's suffrage, in protest against the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst the previous day.

Later that month another suffragette attacked five Bellinis, causing the gallery to close until the start of the First World War, when the Women's Social and Political Union called for an end to violent acts drawing attention to their plight.