The eighteen paintings in this gallery constitute one of the most significant bequests to be made to British public collections in the last fifty years, and was given by the collector and philanthropist Simon Sainsbury (1930-2006) to the collections of The National Gallery and Tate. The personal collection that he created over a period of more than forty years gathered together masterpieces of historic and modern art. Portraiture, still life, landscape and sporting subjects were set alongside his collections of eighteenth-century furniture and decorative arts that, together with his passionate love of architecture, expressed a uniquely English taste.

This display has been devised by curator Andrew Wilson.