Darnley Fine Art

Mary Beale Portrait of Nell Gwyn 1633 - 1699 Oil on canvas, unsigned Image size: 14 ¾ x 16 ½ inches Gilt frame Beale’s portrait depicts a woman seated, head tilted to one side, eyes...

British School The Medici Gardens, Rome 20th Century Oil on canvas, dated '1921' lower left, unsigned Image size: 18 2/3 x 12 4/5 inches (47.5 x 32.5 cm) Contemporary-style hand-made...

Muriel Jackson At the Old Vic 1901-1977 Tempera and charcoal on board, unsigned Image size: 23 x 31 inches (58.5 x 79 cm) Contemporary-style hand-made frame At the Old Vic depicts t...

Adriana Verelst Portrait of Lady Lempster 1683-1769 Oil on canvas, unsigned Image size: 49 ½ x 40 ⅓ inches Contemporary-style gilt frame The sitter is identified as Lady Sophia Osborne, Baroness Lempster (Leominster) (1661 - 1746), the daughter of Thomas Osborne, First Duke of Leeds, and Lady Bridget Bertie. Her first marriage was to Donogh O’Brien, Lord Ibracken in 1679, who passed away in 1682. She then married William Fermor, First Baron Leominster, in 1691, gaining her the title Baroness Leominster. She and William had five children, including Thomas Fermor, First Earl of Pomfret. The portrait is dated 1685, indicating that this identification was added after the creation of the portrait. During the early 18th century a highly romanticised view of country life reached its peak. Many members of the nobility, particularly women, chose to have their portraits painted in shepherdess costume, a break from the conventional norms of formal portraiture. This style developed from 17th century Roman pastoral landscapes by artists like Claude Lorrain and Dutch three-quarter length portraits of shepherds and shepherdesses. These works aimed to evoke themes of Arcadia, poetic escape and landed virtue, with their subjects depicted wearing fashionable and expensive clothing, inconsistent with actual farm work. A knowledge of Latin and Greek pastoral poetry signified education and refinement, desirable qualities for a woman to possess. Life in the country was perceived as peaceful, contemplative and free of hardships, and to be painted in this pastoral style was to create a tangible expression of power and wealth, creating tension between the aristocratic fantasy and the reality of rural life. Lady Lempster has opted for such a depiction. She is shown seated, wearing a white silk gown, head tilted slightly to one side and with a shepherd’s crook and wicker hat adorned with flowers in her lap. She sits on a bench, in front of a large tree, an expansive view visible on the right behind her. So ingrained was this style that the crook and hat alone would be enough to suggest Arcadia to the viewer. There is an interesting contrast between the female sitter and the woman artist who painted her. The shepherdess costume was used predominantly in portraits of women sitters, with the aim of expressing virtues such as purity and appropriate education rather than a distinct, individual personality. Portraits of men however, depicted sitters in settings, costume and surrounded by objects that signified their profession and accomplishments. Adriana Verelst was a woman with a career of her own, able to support herself and defying expectations of the time, the conformity of Lady Lempster’s portrait emphasising Verelst’s own unconformity. Adriana Verelst Adriana Verelst (c. 1683–1769) was an English portrait artist, and daughter of the portrait painter Herman Verelst. Her exact date and place of birth are unknown, though her parents were from Vienna. Verelst is a prime example of how women artists were often misrepresented or even erased from the cannon of art history. There have been questions surrounding her biography with the view that her sister, Maria Verelst and fellow portrait artist, did not exist and could be Adriana Verelst herself. Contemporary evidence of Adriana’s birth, marriage, career and death exist, however, she has not been included in later art histories. In contrast, there is no contemporary documentary evidence for the existence of Maria Verelst, though she is named in later publications. The name Maria Verelst first appeared in Matthew Bryan’s Dictionary of 1816 and it has been argued that his use of the name was a misinterpretation of ‘M’ being an abbreviation for Maria rather than ‘Mademoiselle’. The date of birth and location in Antwerp was given by J.B. Descamps in 1753, though there is no archival evidence of a birth or baptism for Maria in Antwerp at this time. In 1762, Horace Walpole made the link between Maria and Herman Verelst, an Anglo-Dutch painter, as the father of the artist. As Herman had fled from the siege of Vienna in 1683, biographers resonated that with a birth date of 1680, Maria must have been born in Vienna. Biographers also stated that Maria was trained by her uncle, Simon Verelst, a renown painter of flowers and still lifes. The first reference to 1744 as the date of Maria’s death was in 1859 in Mrs. Ellet’s Women Artists in all Ages and Countries, though no source is given for this date. It has been argued that Maria Verelst is in fact Adriana, claiming that earlier biographies used ‘M. Verelst’ as Mademoiselle in reference to Mademoiselle Adriana Verelst. If these were in fact two separate women, they would have been sisters. Maira’s grandfather, Pieter Hermansz Verelst...

Winifred Anne Rymer Standing Nude fl. 1929 - 1936 Oil on canvas, unsigned Image size: 12 x 24 inches (30.5 x 61 cm) Gilt frame Winifred Rymer (fl. 1929 - 1936) Little is known abou...

Frederick Donald Blake RI, RMSI 1908–1997 Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk Gouache, signed lower right Image size: 6 x 16¼ inches (15 x 41 cm) Hand made gilt frame

British School 19th Century View across a lake Watercolour, monogrammed & dated ’02’ lower right Image size: 11 3⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 inches Framed This ethereal landscape certainly draws upon the nineteenth century European Romantic tradition. The cool palette of blues, silvers and whites creates a sense of wonderment, together with an atmosphere of solitude and journey’s end. At first glance the scene is rather surreal, but the presence of a dry-stone wall and iron railings in the foreground familiarises the landscape. THIS WORK IS PART OF OUR CURRENT EXHIBITION 'MOONLIGHT IN PAINTINGS AND WATERCOLOURS' CURRENTLY SHOWING AT DARNLEY FINE ART...

CHARLES TUNNICLIFFE 1901-1979 Cutting Wheat Watercolour with body colour, unsigned Image size: 9 ½ x 7 inches (25 x 18 cm) Gilt frame

Henrietta Rae Her Eyes are Homes of Silent Prayer 1828-1928 Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 24 x 20 inches (61 x 51cm) Original gilt frame Henrietta Rae’s painting Her Eyes are Homes of Silent Prayer takes its title from a famous line in Section XXXII of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's elegiac poem In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850). It describes Mary of Bethany's profound faith and love for Jesus, highlighting her silent, intense devotion after her brother Lazarus's resurrection. The line signifies deep love surpassing words, focusing on inner spirituality and divine reverence. The work depicts the head and shoulders of a woman in white, turning to look gently up top left of the canvas, her head crowned with ivy and set against a background of Chinese-style inspired motifs. The serene and pensive expression on the woman’s face reflects the subject of devotion described by Tennyson’s poem. Rae often depicted literary figures and this is not the only work by Rae that drew inspiration from Tennyson, with her painting Elaine Guarding the Shield of Lancelot based on the poem Lancelot and Elaine. However, other than the title and the sitter being lost in thought, there is little to identify the subject as one from literature. Victorian art frequently merged with literature to highlight moral, social and emotional themes, however, artists such as Leighton, with whom Rae was acquainted, chose to move away from narrative and design works based purely on aesthetic appeal. Here we see the same focus on beauty over the narrative of religious devotion on which Tennyson’s poem is based. The background of the work is based on Chinese paintings with auspicious clouds (Xiangyun 祥云; 祥雲) scrolls with Chinese-esque characters and two Chinese lion dogs (shíshī 石獅) flanking the woman’s head. In keeping with Chinese tradition, the shíshī are painted as a pair, symbolising the harmony of Yin and Yang. Chinese art had a significant impact on Victorian art, developing from the 18th Century ‘Chinoiserie’. Here, this is combined with ‘Japonisme’, a trend that had been growing from the 1850s, with its influence from Japanese woodblock prints in the flat pattern and vibrant colours. Rae was also influenced by Chinese and Japanese in her earlier work Azaleas (1895), similarly showing the head and shoulders of a woman, gazing up to the left, dressed in a kimono and holding a fan, against a background of an embroidered Chinese dragon. Henrietta Rae (1856 - 1928) Henrietta Rae was born 30th December 1856 in Hammersmith, London, to a civil servant father and musician mother as the youngest of seven children. Though her mother had trained her as a professional concert singer to ensure her future financial self-sufficiency, she began formally studying art aged 13 at the Queen Square School of Art before becoming Heatherley’s School of Art’s first female pupil. After at least five attempts she was awarded a seven-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts and it was there that she met her husband, fellow painter and Academy student Ernest Normand...

British School Self Portrait at the Easel 20th Century Oil on canvas, signed with monogram 'AF' and dated 1929 Image size: 21 x 17 inches (53.5 x 43.5 cm) Hand-made contemporary-styl...

Alfred Egerton Cooper Portrait of Barnes Wallis in Uniform 1883 - 1974 Oil on panel, initialled bottom right Image size: 12 ½ x 9 inches Provenance: Sir Barnes Wallis and thence by ...

Lena Gurr Night Work 1897 - 1992 Oil on Canvas, signed lower right, signed and titled verso Image size: 25 x 21 inches (63.5 x 53.5cm) Contemporary frame Night Work depicts a lonely...