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Periods
The gallery's specialism in Old Master portraiture lies particularly within the 16th and 17th centuries, however there are also occasions when we have sold works from earlier and later periods-
16th Century
About 16th Century portraiture
Portraits in the 16th century, more than ever before, played an important role in sealing the arrival of a new dynasty, and emphasising marital and political alliances. So deeply rooted was the respect for hereditary principle that portraiture was used as a tool to elevate the sitter into their dynastic setting.English portrait painting was at the time deeply influenced by key continental artists, including Augsburg-born Holbein, whose paintings came to define the early Tudor period in England. Holbein came to England in 1526, and although he returned to Basel for a time, he was soon appointed as King's Painter to Henry VIII. His portraits today still possess a feeling of direct individuality to contemporary viewers, and the power to astonish. Artists working in his orbit were William Scrots, whose delicate portraits of Edward VI record a precarious moment in the Tudor lineage, and Hans Eworth, who defined a more sober likeness in Mary I.During the reign of Elizabeth I, portraiture in England became arguably more stylised, exaggerated and iconographic, a reflection of the Queen's desire to control her own courtly image. This facilitated a blossoming of a particularly English aesthetic that obsessively reflected on surface, and the display of wealth through costume. It reached a brilliant climax during the second decade of the reign of James I, with artists such as William Larkin and Paul van Somer, before a resurgence of European naturalism. -
17th Century
ABOUT 17TH CENTURY PORTRAITURE
The beginning of the seventeenth century was disctinctly marked with a changing of monarchal style from the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James VI & I in 1603. Not only did it present the beginning of a new royal dynasty but it also introduced a new form of intellectualised culture in the royal court. Portraitists such as Robert Peake, John de Critz and Marcus Gheeraerts carried forth the stylised mannering of their sitters that had been fashionable in the late Elizabethan era, whilst the newly arrived wave of Flemish artists, like Paul van Somer and George Geldorp, as well as the English-born William Larkin, characterised the newly installed courtiers in a more naturalistic, though still strictly formal, fashion.The artist Cornelius Johnson, whose paintings line the walls of all the great English country houses, began his working life just as the leading Elizabethan and early Jacobean painters, such as those mentioned above, were at the end of theirs. He was the first British-born artist working 'in large' to sign his paintings as a matter of course, and his sensitive likenesses helped shift portraiture in a direction that Antwerp artist Anthony Van Dyck would ultimately perfect. In 1632, Van Dyck was named as Charles I's 'Principalle Paynter in Ordinary', and ennobled with a knighthood. His prodigious genius ushered in a seismic artistic shift to the status quo. He so brilliantly captured the necessary ingredients of the noble portrait, in pose, gesture, costume and self-assurance, that his influence can be seen ever since. He invented an apparently relaxed image of grandeur, though the quality of the costume depicted remained as critical for his sitters then as for the preceding generations of their families. -
18th Century
ABOUT 18TH CENTURY PORTRAITURE
With the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the longstanding Stuart monarchy, who united the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, came to an end in what was now the United Kingdom. With the introduction of the Hanoverian dynasty with King George I, Britain became distinctly more aware of the differences in European culture and what was distinctly 'British'.
European court painters, active from the second half of the 17th century onward, like Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godrey Kneller and Michael Dahl, had integrated so well into British society - many even receiving knighthoods - that they can truly be regarded as countrymen of their English counterparts, like William Dobson and John Michael Wright.
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Notable Sales
Search through a selection of paintings previously handled by The Weiss Gallery that now hang in important private and public collections.
