Mounting Empire: The National Gallery and British Imperialism, 1824-1900

The height of the British Empire in the nineteenth century coincided with the country’s extensive museum-building as state-sponsored cultural programming. This connection has been the focus of substantial research in the past thirty years, which has established the relationship between imperial ideologies and practices, and the public museum complex. This work features historical and science-based institutions, however, the art museum as a distinctive type within the museum taxonomy has not benefitted from the same level of investigation. Stemming from this knowledge gap, this project works to produce a specialised understanding of the unique relationship between British imperialism and the art museum.

Mounting Empire imitates new imperial history’s combination of theoretical, evidentiary-based research, and addresses the obstacles facing the field by incorporating its ideals with those of critical museum studies and British art history. The project centres the National Gallery, London as its case study; through extensive archival research, visual analysis, and critical engagement it unearths the institution’s links to nineteenth-century British imperialism.

Through its qualitative analysis of the Gallery’s history from 1824 to 1900, this research determines that the museum was informed by the practical networks of empire, as well as its ideological underpinnings, and political objectives. Critically, this project argues that the Gallery was activated within the imperial project as a monument to the British Empire, as well as a site for the country’s imperial self-fashioning and state formation. In examining the nexus between art, empire, and the National Gallery it concludes that the institution was operative within the imperial framework as an instructive tool in the creation, consumption, and promotion of imperial artwork. Overall, the thesis locates specific and broad connections between the National Gallery and imperialism, which provide a critical foundation and model for future inquiries into the art museum’s nuanced relationship with empire.