National Gallery catalogues with online extracts
About the catalogues
Scholarly research into our collection and bringing the results of that research to a wider public are at the heart of the National Gallery’s role.
The Gallery has been undertaking a long-term cataloguing programme since the early 1990s in which curators carry out new research to update our knowledge on each painting, including systematic re-examination using the latest methods in collaboration with scientists and conservators, plus extensive new imaging by the photographic team.
This research has been published in book form in a series of collection catalogues generously supported by the Arthur and Holly Magill Foundation. Drafts of a small number of entries from three of the catalogues were made available online in advance of publication.
Now, as part of the Gallery’s 200th anniversary celebrations, 200 further entries are being added. These are either from the published catalogues, extracts from new online-only catalogues or new entries that have been written on a selected group of major paintings.
New catalogue extracts available online
Printed catalogue extracts available online
About the text
These catalogue entries are a mixture of new ‘born digital’ entries, and entries from previously published catalogues.
When converting the previously-published files we have tried to stay as close to the original texts and arrangements as possible, whilst also creating online entries that are self-contained. This means that sections like bibliographies and appendices appear in the individual entry webpage. Bibliographies have been collated from various sources (this is why, for example, individual references may be formatted differently). The way we tag items to add them to lists of references may mean that the hyperlinking of references appears inconsistent – we’ll be working on improving this.
Editorially, we have corrected any known errors. We have also acquired and cleared new images, so credit lines have been updated. Images, which often fell in the middle of running text, have been moved to the next paragraph break. The main image for each entry has been moved to the top. Captions which applied to more than one image have been divided so that each image has its own caption.
Texts remain as they were published. In a few cases an ‘update’ section summarises recent research.