GUILDHALL ART GALLERY
The first Guildhall Art Gallery was built in 1885 to display the City of London Corporation's growing art collection and aimed to cater to the increased taste for Art in Victorian society and is in the Moorgate area of the City of London. Under the leadership of its first Director, Sir Alfred George Temple (27 October 1848–8 January 1928), the Gallery ran a series of popular and influential exhibitions and expanded its collection of contemporary 19th century paintings. The Victorian gallery was almost entirely destroyed by fire during a severe air raid on 10 May 1941 during the Second World War, but large parts of the collection had been removed to underground storage in Wiltshire but 164 paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints and 20 sculptures were lost. A temporary structure for use as a ceremonial venue and exhibition space was built on the cleared site in 1946 and the City organised two annual exhibitions, The Lord Mayor’s Art Award and the City of London Art Exhibition, in addition to a series of major loan exhibitions between 1952 and 1972 on topics including Canaletto in England, David Roberts (24 October 1796–25 November 1864), Samuel Scott (c1702–12 October 1772) and Sir James Thornhill (25 July 1675 or 1676–4 May 1734). In 1985 the City decided to redevelop the site and add a new Gallery on its lower levels, the architect was Richard Gilbert Scott (12 December 1923–1 July 2017), who had earlier worked on the Guildhall restoration and designed the new Guildhall Library and West Wing of 1974. The new Guildhall Art Gallery finally opened to the public in August 1999 and the Amphitheatre in 2002 and in 2014, the Gallery underwent a re-hang, doubling the number of paintings on display and presenting a new curatorial selection. Today, the Gallery’s focus is to collect works of direct relevance to the capital, whether in relation to the artist or to the subject of the work, and to programme exhibitions and events with a focus on London. Within this, the Gallery endeavours to acquire works of art and run public programmes which are representative of all Londoners, and to be an art gallery about London for London. Suffolk artist pictures in the Guildhall Art Gallery include those by Niels Møller Lund and exhibitors include Jack Savage and Henry Scott.
Website: https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk
Works by This Artist
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