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For "all ranks and degrees of men"

This chapter was commissioned for the Getty's new publication devoted to scholarship on the earliest European art museums and narrates the complex history of the early discussions, and eventual founding, of London's National Gallery, first in its Pall Mall location and from the late 1830s in Trafalgar Square. The essay narrates the missed or failed early opportunities to found a national museum of art in the UK; the importance of political figures in all sides of the spectrum of government from the early 1820s; and the collaboration of important private collectors in this measure aimed to 'improve the taste' of the nation through acquaintance with art. The essay also relates the physical conditions of curatorship, the collections policy, and the public education techniques haltingly available in the National Gallery's first decades; including the assessments of many Government Select Committees of the social dynamics of viewing and understanding European art from the 1830s to the 1850s. Connections are forged with other techniques of 'rational entertainment' such as sporting and organised leisure activities in early Victorian England.