First look: the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ rehang at London’s National Gallery

On 10 May the National Gallery in London is to unveil the first full rehang of its collection since the opening of the Sainsbury Wing in 1991. The wing has been closed for just over two years, to create an enlarged and more welcoming entrance foyer.

The Art Newspaper was given an early tour by Christine Riding, the director of collections and research, who has overseen the rehang. She describes her task as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. Now virtually completed, the rehang means that the National Gallery will show nearly 40% of its collection.

There will be 1,045 paintings hanging in the upper-floor rooms: 919 from the collection, plus 126 on loan. Nearly a third will be in the Sainsbury Wing and the rest on the main floor of the original Wilkins building.

What has gone largely unnoticed amid the fanfare over the imminent reopening is that after the closure of the exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 on 22 June, more pictures from the collection could be presented in the lower rooms of the Wilkins building. At that point around half the gallery’s entire collection of 2,626 paintings would be on view.

In the meantime, the present rehang of all the upper rooms, which celebrates the gallery’s bicentenary, has been sponsored by C C Land, a Hong Kong-based property development company. The resulting display is being called “C C Land: The Wonder of Art”.

A west to east hang

Thirty-four years after the last full rehang, visitors might expect a radical change, but the basic scheme remains similar: a chronological sequence from the west of the building complex to the east, with northern and southern European paintings usually in separate rooms. Within this basic scheme the positions of many pictures have been changed.

The number of works on display is slightly greater than before, thanks to a marginally denser hang, more glass cases in the centre of rooms, two walls with 34 plein-air landscape oil sketches (Room 39) and an additional space (Room 15a) with small Dutch pictures.

Riding has been particularly keen to emphasise “how artists have been influenced by their predecessors”. For instance, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (1782) is hung in the same octagonal space (Room 15) asthe picture that inspired it, Peter Paul Rubens’s presumed Portrait of Susanna Lunden (1622-25).

JMW Turner’s Dutch Boats in a Gale (The Bridgewater Sea Piece) (1801) is displayed alongside earlier Dutch seascapes, including Willem van de Velde’s Dutch Ships and Small Vessels Offshore in a Breeze (about 1660) (Room 19). Riding also points out that artists sometimes owned works by their predecessors. Joshua Reynolds once had Jacopo Bassano’s The Good Samaritan (1562-63) (Room 9) and Lucian Freud had Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s Italian Woman (around 1870) (Room 41).

Works by female artists have been given greater prominence. The National Gallery has only 27 paintings by women (a reflection of their relative rarity before the late 19th century), of which 12are on display. These include works by Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, Rosa Bonheur, Eva Gonzalès and Berthe Morisot.

Some paintings were conserved during the refurbishment, such as Paolo Uccello’s monumental Battle of San Romano (1438-40) (Room 62). A few pictures have also been reframed.

The presentation has been rethought. Some paintings are hung slightly higher. It will be interesting to see how the labelling deals with now-controversial subjects, such as race.

It is not just the hang that has changed. All painted walls were redecorated. The replica “club-­land” 19th-century leather seating is being replaced by modern wooden benches, giving a more contemporary feel.

What next? Decisions on the lower-level displays remain to be finalised, but the seven rooms are likely to house selected works from sections of the collection that are well represented, particularly the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch 17th century. The lower-level rooms would have space for 150 to 300 more paintings. If this goes ahead, then half the collection would be on view.

From the ‘Wilton Diptych’ to late Monet

The Sainsbury Wing will now be the main entry point for visitors, with possibly more than 90% coming through there rather than via the portico or Getty entrances. On climbing the imposing staircase, visitors will continue to find the late medieval and early Renaissance paintings on the wing’s upper floor, to the left. The first picture to be encountered will appropriately be the Wilton Diptych, a very early work (1395-99) of either English or French origin, providing an intriguing portal into Renaissance art (Room 51). The long central aisle of the Sainsbury Wing will house larger religious paintings. Altogether the 15 rooms in the Sainsbury Wing will display around 300 pictures.

The chronological route then continues on the other side of the upper staircase through the 47 display rooms of the Wilkins building, opened in 1838 and extended on several occasions. The first series of galleries, up to the central hall and portico, will present the later Renaissance and beyond, mainly the 16th and 17th centuries. Further on lie the later galleries, culminating with the early 20th century at the eastern end.

Three artists are being honoured with displays in dedicated rooms: Titian, Rembrandt and Claude Monet. Georges Seurat’s newly conserved Bathers at Asnières (1884) is given its own wall in Room 45, with a display case containing related oil sketches.

The reopening will certainly lead to an increase in visitor numbers, which is much needed. In 2019, just before Covid-19, the gallery welcomed just over six million visitors, but last year the number was only 3.2 million, partly because ofthe slow recovery of international tourism and the temporary closure of the Sainsbury Wing. Although the full reopening and rehang will provide a welcome boost, Riding does not expect the gallery to get back to pre-Covid-19 figures until 2027.