This winged Victory, along with its pair, accompanies another figure of Victory on the façade above the National Gallery’s Getty Entrance. They, and five similar figures, are the work of the British neoclassical sculptor, Edward Hodges Baily. Both the winged figures clasp a palette and paintbrushes to symbolise the art of painting fostered inside the building, elements that were added to suit the statues’ new setting. When the Gallery’s current building was opened to the public by Queen Victoria on 9 April 1838, another artistic institution, the Royal Academy of Arts, occupied the east wing, behind these winged figures with their brushes and palettes. The Academy moved to its current home in Burlington House in 1868.During the construction of the Trafalgar Square building, its architect, William Wilkins, was forced to use masonry and statuary recycled from other projects in a cost-cutting exercise imposed by the Government. This pair of winged female figures, and another pair without attributes, which all now adorn the Gallery’s façade, were originally commissioned by George IV either for Marble Arch or Buckingham Palace.