Guildhall Art Gallery

The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the art collection of the City of London, England. The museum is located in the Moorgate area of the City of London. It is a stone building in a semi-Gothic style intended to be sympathetic to the historic Guildhall, which is adjacent and to which it is connected internally.

Guildhall Art Gallery

Established	1885 (original), 1999 (current)
Location	Moorgate area, City of London, England
Coordinates	51.5155°N 0.0914°W / 51.5155; -0.0914
Type	Art museum
Collection size	About 4,000 items
Director	Elizabeth Scott
Architect	Richard Gilbert Scott (current building)

History

The City of London Corporation had commissioned and collected portraits since 1670, originally to hang in the Guildhall. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Corporation's art collections grew through gifts and bequests to include history paintings and other genres of art.^[1]

The first purpose-built gallery for displaying the collection was completed in 1885 (140 years ago) (1885). This building was destroyed in The Blitz in 1941, resulting in the loss of 164 paintings, drawings, watercolours, and prints, and 20 sculptures.^[2] It was not until 1985 that the City of London Corporation decided to redevelop the site and build a new gallery. The building was designed in a postmodern style by the British architect Richard Gilbert Scott.^[3][4] The new facility, which was intended to house a collection of about 4,000 items, was completed in 1999 (26 years ago) (1999).^[5]

The centrepiece of the collection, John Singleton Copley's huge painting depicting The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, was placed in a prominent position in the entrance hall of the gallery.^[6]

Vivien Knight was head of the Gallery, from 1983 until her death in 2009.^[7]

Amphitheatre

The Roman amphitheatre below the Guildhall Art Gallery

Main article: Amphitheatre (London)

The Guildhall complex was built on the site of London's Roman amphitheatre, and some of the remains of this are displayed in situ in a room in the basement of the art gallery.^[8]

Gallery

• 
  Winter Landscape with a Frozen River and Figures by Hendrick Avercamp, c.1620
• 
  Boy with a Glass and a Lute by Frans Hals, 1626
• 
  Cityscape with a Church and a Square by Jan van der Heyden, c.1669
• 
  Panoramic View of Haarlem by Jacob van Ruisdael, 1670
• 
  Blackfriars Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral by William Marlow, c.1762
• 
  Portrait of Thomas Tomkins by Joshua Reynolds, 1789
• 
  The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782 by John Singleton Copley, 1791
• 
  John Philip Kemble as Coriolanus by Thomas Lawrence, 1798
• 
  Barmouth Sands by William Collins, 1835
• 
  Queen Victoria Enthroned in the House of Lords by George Hayter, 1838
• 
  Keats Listening to a Nightingale on Hampstead Heath by Joseph Severn, 1845
• 
  In the Gulf of Venice by Clarkson Stanfield, 1848
• 
  On the Road from Waterloo to Paris by Marcus Stone, 1863
• 
  My First Sermon by John Everett Millais, 1863
• 
  Sanctuary by Richard Burchett, 1867
• 
  The Last Evening by James Tissot, 1873
• 
  Too Early by James Tissot, 1873
• 
  La Ghirlandata by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1873
• 
  Margaret of Anjou Being Taken Prisoner After the Battle of Tewkesbury by John Gilbert, 1875
• 
  The Music Lesson by Frederic Leighton, 1877
• 
  Clytemnestra by John Collier, 1882
• 
  The Violinist by George Adolphus Storey, 1886
• 
  The Ninth of November, 1888 by William Logsdail, 1890
• 
  The Betrothed by John William Godward, 1892
• 
  On a Fine Day by Elizabeth Forbes, 1903

See also

• Alfred Temple, first director of the original gallery
• Statue of Margaret Thatcher, Guildhall Art Gallery