The third director, Sir Frederic William Burton, laid the foundations of the collection of 18th-century art and made a quantity of excellent purchases from English private collections. When the gallery bought Holbein’s Ambassadors from the Earl of Radnor in 1890, it did so with assistance from non-public people for the primary time in its historical past. In 1897, the formation of the National Gallery of British Art, identified unofficially from early in its historical past as the Tate Gallery, allowed some British works to be moved off-site, following the precedent set by the Vernon collection and the Turner Bequest. Works …