Meet your expert private guide outside the National Gallery in the magnificent Trafalgar Square, dominated by Nelson’s Column. Your guide will show you inside the National Gallery, built in 1824 and designed to be a neo-classical temple to the arts, to begin your tour.
The Gallery houses an immense collection of around 2300 masterpieces spanning the medieval period right up until 1900, so you’ll be taken on a magical journey through the history of Western art.
Inside this majestic building, you’ll see some of the most iconic paintings of the Italian High Renaissance anywhere in the world. Highlights include Botticelli’s Mars and Venus, Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks and an exquisite drawing of the Virgin and Child, portraits by Raphael, Michelangelo’s Entombment, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, the Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and many more.
Wander into the Baroque era and admire the stunning Rokeby Venus by Velazquez, leading light of the Spanish Golden Age followed by works of the Dutch masters: Rubens, Rembrandt, Holbein, Vermeer and van Dyck – including the famous equestrian portrait of the ill-fated King Charles I of England who would lose his head during the English Civil War.
Explore the Rococo and Romantic artists – the dreamy aristocratic portraits of Gainsborough and Reynolds, the romanticized landscapes of John Constable and the whimsical seascapes by Turner – including The Fighting Temeraire. You’ll see the awe-inspiring, iconic life-size portrait of the racehorse Whistlejacket painted in 1762 by George Stubbs.
Finally, enter the mesmerizing wing of the Impressionists including Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, dazzling works by Degas, Renoir, Seurat, and the venerable fathers of Impressionism Manet and Monet.
