National Gallery lends famous art for first time

The National Gallery has sent some of its finest masterpieces around the UK to mark its 200th anniversary.

Twelve famous artworks including Constable's The Hay Wain, Botticelli's Venus and Mars, and Renoir's The Umbrellas have travelled across the UK.

Simultaneous exhibitions opened on Friday at 12 institutions, putting more than half of the population within an hour of one of the masterpieces.

Some of the paintings have never been loaned by the gallery before.

The £95m bicentenary plans also include a blockbuster Van Gogh show, the creation of a new digital gallery, a UK road trip of art workshops, and a refurbishment of the National Gallery site at London's Trafalgar Square.

Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller has been commissioned to create a work celebrating 200 years of public art.

The National Gallery will also host a party to celebrate its birthday weekend, with live music from Jools Holland, DJ performances and interactive art workshops.

The National Gallery was set up 200 years ago by Parliament to create a collection of paintings for the use of the public. But for much of the past two centuries, the only way that the public could see the art was in person in London.

In recent decades, the gallery has stepped up its efforts to share its art more widely across the nation. After it bought a self-portrait by acclaimed 17th Century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi in 2018, the painting went on a tour of the UK, not to museums and galleries but to places where different kinds of people might actually see it.

The work spent time in a GP's surgery in Yorkshire, a girls' school in Newcastle, a library in Glasgow and even a women's prison in Surrey.

Two of the 12 masterpieces in the latest scheme have never been loaned by the National Gallery before - Botticelli's Venus and Mars and the 14th Century Wilton Diptych, regarded as one of the greatest pictures ever produced in the UK.

But with only 12 paintings out of a collection now totalling around 2,400 being lent for the NG200: National Treasures exhibitions, the gallery's plans could be accused of being small-scale in outlook.

And of the 12 on loan, only one is by a woman - Gentileschi's Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, said it was "the most ambitious, national programme we have ever undertaken".

It is "all about reaching out right across the nation", he said, adding: "A significant amount of the activities are in regional locations and are mostly free. We also want to reach out globally and promote the UK."