Great art gets new V&A home

Degas' Ballet Scene was painted in 1876

The V&A Museum is to open a suite of restored galleries to house 200 works by great painters, donated between 1857 and 1901.

The galleries will open on 26 November and feature some of the world's most famous artists including John Constable, Degas, Delacroix and Millais.

One of the galleries will be devoted to landscape paintings and watercolours with exhibits by Turner, Blake and Gainsborough.

There will also be a chance to see Constable's oil sketches which were donated to the museum by the artist's daughter.

Included in the collection are Brighton Beach, with Colliers (1824) and Boat Building Near Flatford Mill (1815).

Degas' Ballet Scene from Robert Le Diable (1876), the first French Impressionist painting to enter a British institution, and Botticelli's Portrait of Woman will also be uncovered.

Constable's Brighton Beach with Colliers with be on display

One room will be devoted to the collection of Constantine Ionides, a leading Victorian collector of Old Masters and friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

As well as paintings there will be French sculpture, Oriental ceramics and decorated piano designed by William Morris.

The New Paintings Galleries are the latest project in the V&A's 10-year plan to transform and renew the museum and its displays.

The galleries were originally built to house the museum's paintings collections during the 1850s.