It came into being when the British government purchased 38 work from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that preliminary purchase, the gallery was formed primarily by its early directors, particularly Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds of the collection. The collection is smaller than many European nationwide galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western portray “from Giotto to Cézanne” are represented with important works. It was claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on everlasting exhibition, however that is …