The National Gallery's major rehang - “from the tube to Titian in a minute and a half”

Finally London National Gallery’s major rehang is being unveiled May 10.

It’s being celebrated as CC Land: The Wonder of Art.

Jackie Wullschläger writing, in “The National Gallery’s rehang is a fine achievement — proof that it is a sanctuary of beauty” (FT) has shared some big changes (most especially the 1000 works on display and the Jan van Eyck self-portrait):

More paintings are on show (more than 1,000), and all look better, thanks to muted wall colours throughout, allowing the canvases’ chromatic richness to shine. The hang plays to the building’s strength, those numerous corridor-like galleries which entice you on, promising revelations, broad vistas, intriguing associations.

‘Algernon Moses Marsden’ by Jacques Joseph
Tissot (1887) © The National Gallery

At other times, fresh arrivals shift a room’s whole tenor ... Interloper among Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, Tissot’s assertive businessman “Algernon Moses Marsden”, elbow resting on a flamboyant tiger’s rug, reminds us how diverse the 19th-century avant garde was. Marsden looks unreliable and was — he went bankrupt three times. Delightfully, his great-grandson, fund manager Martyn Arbib, made this recent purchase possible. 

Spurring the entire overhaul was the Sainsbury Wing closure in 2023, for its foyer to be redeveloped. Architect Annabelle Selldorf will vanquish what Finaldi called the “forest” of obtrusive pillars, to provide a better, brighter main entrance, not yet unveiled. It will deliver, Finaldi promises, “a warm welcome” and speed: “from the tube to Titian in a minute and a half.” 

An artist’s impression of the reconfigured Sainsbury
Wing of the National Gallery © The National Gallery

Compared with current queues and security checks, that sounds heartening: straight upstairs to room nine, the splendid Venetian gallery, now opening on a room for the first time dedicated solely to Titian — destination pictures “Bacchus and Ariadne”, “Diana and Actaeon”, “The Death of Actaeon”, pagan myths of seduction, cruelty, fate, brought alive in the richest, fleshiest painting, foundational to art history. 

Piero della Francesca’s pellucid, calmly geometric “Baptism of Christ” is back in its chapel-like setting. Jacopo di Cione’s “Coronation of the Virgin” with its orchestra of angels returns within a new carved frame, every finial and column painstakingly gilded, uniting its two parts. In an inlaid wood frame with wave decorations, Uccello’s gleaming, restored “The Battle of San Romano” — snow-white chargers, crimson/gold hat, grid pattern of broken lances — looks almost modern; “like de Chirico”, Finaldi says. 

Northern Renaissance pictures large and small, amply though not sparsely hung, have also settled into this faux nave setting. Watching over them is Van Eyck’s quizzical “Portrait of a Man”, another restoration success: overpainted black ground removed, narrow sloping shoulders clearer, contrasts of light and shadow thrown by the extravagant creased turban more vivid.

Some very joyous new displays loftily transcend culture wars, celebrating individual (male) genius — all the Monets, from the realistic choppy seascape “La Pointe de la Hève” to the abstracting “Water-Lilies”, gather for the first time in one room, demonstrating continuity as well as sustained experiment — and personal taste. 

A theatrical gallery partly reprises Charles I’s rare collection, reuniting famous pictures of turbulent post-execution provenance: Tintoretto’s vigorous, intense narrative “Esther before Ahasuerus”, from the Royal Collection; Correggio’s soft, blue-gold-white harmony of figures in a landscape “The School of Love”. Charles’s reign, Finaldi says, “was a key moment when the English court was at its most refined and engaged with Europe — and he lost his head!”

Pivotal to Finaldi’s vision are particular relationships between artists, taking Turner’s demand that his seaports hang alongside Claude’s as “nodal points, steering elements”. Rembrandt’s “Self-portrait at the Age of 34” hangs with its model, Titian’s “Portrait of Gerolamo Barbarigo”; Dutch Caravaggesque follower Gerard van Honthorst is next to the master.