Old Masters Portrait Paintings

Titan Fine Art present this accomplished work, from Kilcooley Abbey, Co Tipperary, Ireland. It portrays a gentleman traditionally known as the English military commander and politic...

Portrait of a young British Girl, in her white dress with Pink Sash. Choosing to acquire an 18th-century portrait of a young girl by English artist John Russell is an opportunity to...

Portrait of a Lady in a Blue Gown Holding a Sheer Scarf c.1675-85 Studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723) Titan Fine Art present this captivating portrait by the leading late seve...

Portrait of an Aristocratic Gentleman British artist, first half 18th century oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 50 x 40 inches provenance: private collection, Dorset, England condition...

Provenance: Torres Family Collection, Asunción, Paraguay, ca. 1967-2017 While the genre of portraiture flourished in the New World, very few examples of early Spanish colonial portraits have survived to the present day. This remarkable painting is a rare example of female portraiture, depicting a member of the highest echelons of society in Cuzco during the last quarter of the 17th century. Its most distinctive feature is the false beauty mark (called a chiqueador) that the sitter wears on her left temple. Chiqueadores served both a cosmetic and medicinal function. In addition to beautifying their wearers, these silk or velvet pouches often contained medicinal herbs thought to cure headaches. This painting depicts an unidentified lady from the Creole elite in Cuzco. Her formal posture and black costume are both typical of the established conventions of period portraiture and in line with the severe fashion of the Spanish court under the reign of Charles II, which remained current until the 18th century. She is shown in three-quarter profile, her long braids tied with soft pink bows and decorated with quatrefoil flowers, likely made of silver. Her facial features are idealized and rendered with great subtly, particularly in the rosy cheeks. While this portrait lacks the conventional coat of arms or cartouche that identifies the sitter, her high status is made clear by the wealth of jewels and luxury materials present in the painting. She is placed in an interior, set off against the red velvet curtain tied in the middle with a knot on her right, and the table covered with gold-trimmed red velvet cloth at the left. The sitter wears a four-tier pearl necklace with a knot in the center with matching three-tiered pearl bracelets and a cross-shaped earing with three increasingly large pearls. She also has several gold and silver rings on both hands—one holds a pair of silver gloves with red lining and the other is posed on a golden metal box, possibly a jewelry box. The materials of her costume are also of the highest quality, particularly the white lace trim of her wide neckline and circular cuffs. The historical moment in which this painting was produced was particularly rich in commissions of this kind. Following his arrival in Cuzco from Spain in the early 1670’s, bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo actively promoted the emergence of a distinctive regional school of painting in the city. Additionally, with the increase of wealth and economic prosperity in the New World, portraits quickly became a way for the growing elite class to celebrate their place in society and to preserve their memory. Portraits like this one would have been prominently displayed in a family’s home, perhaps in a dynastic portrait gallery. We are grateful to Professor Luis Eduardo Wuffarden for his assistance cataloguing this painting on the basis of high-resolution images. He has written that “the sober palette of the canvas, the quality of the pigments, the degree of aging, and the craquelure pattern on the painting layer confirm it to be an authentic and representative work of the Cuzco school of painting...

Titan Fine Art presents this portrait of a brave and chivalrous character. The gentleman has been depicted in armour, an elaborate full wig, and in accordance with the latest French fashion, an elaborate type of Venetian Gros point lace cravat and large silk bow (also called a cravat-string) – a type that were popular across Europe in the 1680’s. Point lace was fabulously expensive - a cravat was equivalent to six weeks income for a gentleman - and therefore indicative of a wearer's wealth and social class. A nobleman riding onto the battlefield would wear a lace cravat over his armour to demonstrate his status. The attire, along with the coat-of-arms, help to proclaim to every onlooker that the gentleman is a superior being. The depiction of the lace, apart from denoting the wealth of the sitter, was a deliberate way for the artist to demonstrate his own artistic ambition and technical skills Argent seasoned gule with three lozenges sable are those of the Crois family, who were minor nobility, originating from the Boulogne region in the north of France. The fact that the sitter is a high ranking noble excludes him as a member of the Crois family. As is so commonly the case, the coat of arms was a later addition, probably in the nineteenth century, by a family who sought to glorify their pedigree by adding their arms to the portrait. These arms are now an interesting part of the portraits history. The artist has captured a sense of the sitter’s character and the features of the sitter’s face have been rendered with great sensitivity. His confident gaze perhaps reflecting the near invincibility afforded by this steel suit. The work is a very good example of French portraiture from the period. Presented in an exquisite hand-carved and gilded seventeenth century frame - which is an exceptional work of art in itself. Pierre Mignard, known as le Romain, was a French painter of the court of the French King Louis XIV and was, with Charles Le Brun (1619-90), one of the most successful painters during the reign of Louis XIV. After training in Troyes, where he was born, and in Bourges, Mignard joined the studio of Simon Vouet in Paris in 1627. He went to Italy in 1636 and remained there until 1657. He studied the work of Correggio and Pietro da Cortona in Rome as well as copying Annibale Carracci's frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese. On Le Brun's death in 1690 he succeeded him as its Director and as First Painter to the King painting...

Portrait of Colonel William Helyar (1621-1698) and Rachel Helyar (c.1633-1678) c.1656 Circle of Robert Walker (act. 1637-1656) These fascinating portraits, presented by Titan Fine Art, depict Colonel William Helyar, High Sheriff of Somersetshire, and his wife Rachel Helyar nee Wyndham, a daughter and co-heiress of Sir Hugh Wyndham, 1st Baronet (died 1663) of Pilsden Court, Dorset. They are exquisite examples of portraiture during the Interregnum when England was under various forms of republican government. The history of the seventeenth century is in part the story of the Stewarts and their approach to government and the church; their ebbing and flowing popularity and the disastrous decisions that led to Civil War. But another fascinating dynasty also ruled Britain: the Cromwell’s. Between 1653 and 1659, following the Civil Wars and experimental Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell governed as Lord Protector followed by his son Richard. Cromwell’s Protectorate is usually imagined as a grey, joyless, military regime. But the reality was rather different. Cromwell presided over a colourful and fashionable court where music and the arts flourished, masques were revived and the first English operas performed. Too often the London of the 1650s is painted as puritanical and repressive in contrast to the vivid, fun-loving capital of the Restoration. Yet, under Cromwell, this was the city where the first coffee houses were opening, where a young Samuel Pepys was embarking on his career as a civil servant with the patronage of one of Cromwell’s councillors and where Christopher Wren was enjoying his new Chair of astronomy at Gresham College, appointed after the personal intervention of Cromwell. When Cromwell was invested as Lord Protector for the second time in 1657, the lavish ceremony in Westminster Hall and procession through London matched any previous coronation for pageantry with thousands lining the streets, bells ringing, bonfires blazing and free French wine flowing through the city. The gentleman in our portrait is Colonel William Helyar (1621-1698), Sheriff of Somerset and as a Royalist during the English Civil War. As one of the most prominent old families of the South-West, the Helyar’s family roots in Somerset can be traced back to 1616 when the Reverend William Helyar (1559-1645), chaplain to Elizabeth I, who was also a cousin by marriage, purchased the family residence Coker Court in East Coker, Somerset. He married a Devonshire heiress and several estates were bestowed on him as a result. He was a warm supporter of Charles I in the Civil War and was in residence at Exeter in 1643 when the Parliamentarians pillaged the cathedral. Elderly as he was, he boldly resisted them, but was beaten, pelted with mud, and locked up in a ship in the port and only let out on payment of £800. He retired to Coker where he died in 1645. His eldest son Henry died in 1634 and he was succeeded by his grandson, Colonel William Helyar, the sitter in our portrait. Colonel Helyar raised a troop of horse for King Charles I and was a colonel in the king's army. He was at Exeter when it was captured by the Parliamentary forces in 1646 and thus deemed ‘Traitor to the Parliament’. His estates were sequestered, but they were returned and he was discharged and pardoned on payment of £1,522. During the Restoration he was a Sheriff and he also helped James II repel the Monmouth Rebellion. The companion portrait represents the Colonel’s wife, Rachel Helyar (baptised 24th June 1633 at St Mary Aldermanbury, London – died 1678). She was the youngest daughter and co-heir of Sir Hugh Wyndham, 1st Baronet of Pilsdon Court and Mary Wyndham nee Alanson (Sir Hugh should not be confused with his first cousin once removed from Somerset, also Sir Hugh Wyndham (bef. 1604 - 1684). Rachel is a thirteenth generation descendant of King Henry III. The couple resided at the family seat of Coker Court (interestingly, within the churchyard, lie the remains of the poet T.S. Eliot who once wrote a poem about East Coker). A marriage settlement in extant shows that the couple were married in 1656; the portraits were most likely painted to mark this important event in the sitter’s lives. Rachel holds roses, the flower of love, and the putto pouring water is representative of her purity, and possibly, the plighting of troth. Colonel Helyar wears a gold wedding band. The couple had four sons: George, William (MP) (1662-1742), John, and Richard. Colonel Helyar died in December 1697 and was buried at Whitechurch, Dorset 2 Jan 1698. This period in which this portrait was painted was known as the Protectorate (1653-1659). This period offered relative peace, as the English Civil War ended in 1651. It was an interesting time for portraiture in England and Scotland – in between the great artistic geniuses and dominance of Van Dyke and Peter Lely. Much of the foreign-born artistic talent had fled England and Scotland during the Civil War and the artists that had remained were in great demand, in part due to the newly exposed strata of society wishing to be painted. Sitters on both sides were depicted in portraits in very similar ways. They are not, on the whole, shown as the Roundheads and Cavaliers of popular history. In fact, it is usually impossible to guess their political allegiances from the style of their portrait and their Parliamentarian and royalist iconographies, as portraits on both sides followed the same conventions and looked identical. Colonel Helyar has been depicted in armour and holding a Marshal’s baton of command, confirming his status. There is a great sense of realism and a particular delicacy, note the finely rendered hand resting on the rapier. Rachel is wearing a satin dress with expansive sleeves and a crimson drapery over her shoulder and held up by her left hand. She wears large pearl...

The portrait genre was valued particularly highly in English society. Neither landscapes nor allegorical pictures were ever priced so highly at exhibitions and in the trade as depictions of people, from the highest aristocracy to scholars, writers, poets and statesmen. This charming portrait, presented by Titan Fine Art, of a fashionable young gentleman and his faithful pet is an excellent example of 17th century child portraiture in England. There is a remarkable beauty and sensitivity to the portrait. The face, particularly well rendered, has captured the character of this young man – both charming and at the same time mischievous. Only the playful attention of a small dog suggests anything less than patrician dignity. Symbolism was important in portraiture and it provided a pointed and aspirational narrative that would not have been lost on contemporary viewers. For example, the presence of the dog, which was likely the boy’s pet, is at once a charming pictorial device and also a clear allusion to fidelity, trust and loyalty. The hairstyle and the attire, notably the type of cravat with the blue ribbon, help to date this portrait to between 1670 to 1685. Until the late eighteenth century children were dressed as adults - boys were dressed like men in breeches, vests, and coats between four and seven years of age. The expensive lace is an indication to his family’s wealth. Held in a good quality and condition antique gilded frame. Born in Suffolk, Mary Beale, nee Cradock (1633-1699) was employed by many of the most distinguished persons of her time including nobility, landed gentry, and clergymen. Technically accomplished, her paintings are noteworthy for their honest and sympathetic portrayal. In 1651 she married Charles Beale...

A charming portrait of a young girl presented in the original, hand carved giltwood frame. Circle of John Opie (1761-1807) Portrait of a young girl, half length With old label to t...

Painting Ships in a well-protected tube from Nigeria This work is unique, this is not a print or other type of copy. Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity (Issued by the Gallery)

Titan Fine Art are pleased to present this charming bust-length portrait, which is a good example of the style of portrait painted in England in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The attire consists of the finest silks, and the full billowing sleeves, bows, and hairstyle help in dating this portrait to circa 1637. The accessory par excellence – pearls – are worn as a necklace and were a very popular accessory. The artist makes no attempt to obey the rules of Baroque and instead sensitively depicts in complete honesty his sitter against a plain wall, and without distracting backdrops and flowing draperies – this work is very redolent of the sumptuous half-length female portraits that Cornelius Johnson...

This exquisite portrait, presented by Titan Fine Art, belongs to a type of portrait known as ‘Les Belle Romanes’. Voet is perhaps best remembered for his series of them – a great set of portraits...