Van Gogh Sunflowers Projected Onto National Gallery To Celebrate Your Paintings Project

Oversized images of publicly owned masterpieces were projected on to the National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square last night, as part of the celebrations marking the completion of Your Paintings, a BBC sponsored website showing the entire UK national collection of oil paintings. The projections are just one part of a month-long series of exhibitions and events organised by the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation to celebrate the completion of the ‘Your Paintings’ website.

The projections will took place between 4.30pm and 10pm and were viewable from Trafalgar Square. The National Gallery also featured in a BBC live broadcast in the evening. The projections took place simultaneously in 28 cities across the UK. The sequences included two National Gallery paintings: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews.

‘Sunflowers’ was projected onto all UK buildings involved in the promotion, while ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews ’ was projected onto all participating buildings in England. You could also  view them, along with all the paintings in the collection, on the National Gallery pages of the ‘Your Paintings’ website. If were able to come and watch the projections, you could also see the original ‘Sunflowers’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews’ inside the National Gallery, which was open late on Friday until 9pm along with talks, live music and bar.

‘Your Paintings’ is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. The UK holds in its galleries and civic buildings over 210,000 oil paintings spanning 600 years of art history. Many of these publicly owned works are in storage or held behind closed doors. Through a joint effort by the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and around 3,000 participating collections these paintings are now available online for everyone to enjoy.