No. 100 Pall Mall: The National
Gallery
Occupied part of the site of Carlton Gardens and of the
Reform Club
Before the completion of the present building in
Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery of Pictures had been successively housed, from its formation in 1824, in two houses on the south side of
Pall Mall, Nos. 100 and 105, (ref. 47) the sites of both of
which are now occupied by the Reform Club.
No. 100 stood on part of what is now Carlton
Gardens and on part of the site of the Reform
Club, having a frontage to Pall Mall of 33 feet
and a depth of 46 feet. (ref. 48) The house had a tall late
eighteenth-century front of three storeys, built in
a shallow segmental bow between plain narrow
piers. The ground storey contained two windows
to the east of the arched and pedimented doorway,
and each upper storey had three equally spaced
windows with flat gauged arches.
This house had been occupied from 1787 to
1823 (ref. 34) by John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823),
a wealthy merchant of Russian extraction. (ref. 18) At
the time of his death in 1823 Angerstein had
built up a most important collection of pictures,
and when thirty-eight of these were purchased by
the Government in the following year to form the
nucleus of a national collection, his house was retained as its first home (Plate 42b). Sixty thousand pounds had been voted by the House of
Commons on 2 April 1824 for the purchase,
preservation and exhibition of Angerstein's pictures, and responsibility for them devolved on the
Treasury. The general charge of the collection
and building was at first vested in the keeper,
William Seguier (see page 489). The collection
was opened for the first time to the general public
on 10 May 1824.
The powers of the keeper were limited in the
following July, when 'a Committee of six Gentlemen' (later to become the board of trustees) was
nominated by the Treasury to take over the
superintendence of the gallery. (ref. 49)
The 'six Gentlemen' thus nominated were
Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770–1828), second
Earl of Liverpool and the Prime Minister of the
day; Frederick John Robinson (1782–1859),
later first Earl of Ripon, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer; George Hamilton-Gordon (1784–
1860), fourth Earl of Aberdeen, President of
the Society of Antiquaries 1812–46 and Prime
Minister 1852–5; Charles Long (1761–1838),
first Baron Farnborough, who had assisted George
III and George IV in the decoration of the royal
palaces; Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), who
had been very active in the negotiations for the
purchase of the Angerstein collection and who was
later to be the gallery's first important donor; and
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), President of
the Royal Academy. Three years later this
number was increased by the nomination of
George Agar-Ellis (1797–1833), later first Lord
Dover, and (Sir) Robert Peel (1788–1850), both
notable art collectors. (ref. 18)
No. 100 Pall Mall was soon found to be too
small for the adequate display of the collection,
which, through private benefaction and public
purchase, had considerably increased in size. In
July 1828 the trustees complained to the Treasury
that 'If any Offers of Pictures should be made to us
on behalf of the Public, we should be totaly unable
to display them to advantage, this Circumstance
being known may deter persons from making such
offers, who might otherwise have been induced to
do so.' (ref. 50) Moreover, there were frequent criticisms by members of the public about the dirt and
heat of the gallery and the serious damage sustained by the pictures.
In the spring of 1828 the trustees considered
the adaptation of part of the King's Mews in
Trafalgar Square as a new home for the gallery or
alternatively the construction of additional accommodation at No. 100 Pall Mall.
This latter idea had to be abandoned when the
trustees were notified in 1830 that part of the Pall
Mall site was required for the enlargement of Pall
Mall Court (a small passage to the west of the
gallery building) into a new thoroughfare to Carlton House Terrace, then Carlton House Street.
The Treasury had therefore to agree to the erection of a new building on the north side of Trafalgar Square, (ref. 51) and in 1832 work began on what was
to be the permanent home of the gallery. (ref. 52)
Before the completion of the new gallery,
excavations connected with the erection of the
Carlton Club on the site adjoining No. 100 Pall
Mall undermined the foundations of the house and
the trustees were forced to find a temporary home
for the collection at No. 105, a house five doors to
the west of No. 100. (ref. 53) By 21 February 1834 the
pictures were installed there and on 3 March the
gallery was reopened. (ref. 54) Here it remained until
1838, when the present National Gallery building
was completed. (ref. 52)
No. 100 Pall Mall was demolished shortly after
the departure of the collection.