LONDON, ENGLAND.- The National Gallery presents today Passion for Paint, on view through September 17, 2006 at the Sunley Room. Supported by the Northern Rock Foundation, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and in London by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation. The National Gallery together with Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne have received new funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to develop their successful touring exhibition partnership for three years. The first exhibition in this next phase of the partnership will be on the subject of ‘Paint’. Featuring works by many of the great manipulators of paint, including Rubens, Constable and Monet, the exhibition will explore the different ways in which artists have exploited the substance of paint to both represent and mimic the material world. Of equal importance will be the consideration of the potential of paint as a vehicle of feeling; how we read violence, immediacy, tentativeness or pleasure into paint itself and the way it is applied.