Alfred William Strutt On Sale

Alfred William Strutt was born in Taranaki, New Zealand, the son of the English artist William Strutt. His grandfather was the miniaturist William Thomas Strutt (1777–1850) and his great-grandfather was Joseph Strutt (1742–1802), a social historian and artist. His father had moved to Australia in 1850 and then to New Zealand in 1855, where he recorded the early days of the British colony. Strutt and his family returned to England in 1862. He studied at the Royal College of Art but also received tuition from his father. Strutt exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1877 and was elected in 1889. Like his father, he specialized in genre scenes, often including animals as well as sporting scenes. Strutt’s paintings are well executed and full of humor. A photograph of him by Disdéri (circa 1880) is held by the National Portrait Gallery. Examples of his work can be found at the Grundy Art Gallery, Hastings Museum, Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

An elegant and sophisticated decorative touch in any living space, portrait paintings have remained popular throughout the years and are widely loved pieces of art for display in many homes today.

Portrait paintings are at least as old as ancient Egypt, where realistic, lifelike depictions of the recently deceased — commonly known as “mummy portraits” — were painted on wooden panels and affixed to mummies as part of the burial tradition.

For centuries, painters have used portraiture as a means of expressing a subject’s nobility, societal status and authority. Portraits were given as gifts in Renaissance Europe, and a portrait artist might have been commissioned to help mark a significant occasion such as a wedding or a promotion to high office. Prior to the advent of photography, which eventually replaced painted portraits as a quicker and more efficient way of capturing a person’s essence, the subject of a portrait had to sit for hours until the painter had finished. And during the 18th century in particular, if an artist commissioned for a portrait struggled with how to adequately memorialize and capture a subject’s likeness, sometimes a portrait painting wasn’t completed for up to a year.

Whether it’s part of the gallery-style approach to your living-room or dining-room walls or merely inspiration as you devise an eye-grabbing color scheme in your home, a portrait painting is a timeless decorative object for any interior. A landscape painting or sculpture might give you the kind of insight into a specific region of the world or a different culture that you can ascertain only through art. Similarly, when you take the time to learn about the subject of a portrait painting that you bring into your home — the sitter’s history, the relationship between the sitter and the artist should one exist, the story of how the portrait came to be — that work can become intensely personal in addition to its place as an object for an art-hungry corner of your apartment or house.

On 1stDibs, visit a vast collection of famous portrait paintings or works by emerging artists. Search by medium to find the right portrait paintings for your home in oil paint, synthetic resin paint and more. Find portrait paintings in a variety of styles, too, including contemporary, Impressionist and Pop art, or search by artist to find unique works created by painters such as Mark Beard, Steve Kaufman and Montse Valdés.