Darnley Fine Art Paintings

I.W. Early 20th Century Barmouth Watercolour, initialled and dated 1923 lower right Image size: 40 ½ x 25 inches Hand made frame Original artwork for a poster

Circle of Gerard van Honthorst 1592 - 1656 Portrait of a Gentleman Oil on wooden panel Image size: 29 x 23 inches Contemporary gilt frame Gerard van Honthorst was a Dutch Golden Age...

A Turkish Garden Party Early 19th Century Oil on board Image size: 16 x 20 inches Contemporary frame

Norman Wilkinson CBE PRI 1878 – 1971 THE BANN AT COLERAINE Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 30 x 44 ½ inches (76 x 113 cm) Provenance Commissioned by British Railways 1...

Norman Wilkinson CBE PRI 1878 – 1971 RHUDDLAN CASTLE Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 30 x 45 inches (76 x 114 cm) Hand made frame Provenance Commissioned by London, Mi...

George Leech 1894-1966 Pembrokeshire Coast Oil on canvas , signed Image Size: 39 x 49 inches This is an original artwork for the British Railways Western Region poster. The arti...

Gilbert Jackson English Active: 1620 - 1650 Portrait of a Girl Oil on panel, signed upper left and Inscribed upper right Image size: 24 ½ x 20 inches Contemporary style hand made...

Follower of Jacob de Wit 1695-1754 Venus and Cupid Oil on panel Image size: 7 ¾ inches x 11 ¾ inches Gilt frame A charming example of trompe-l'œil, this painting is abrim with...

Norman Wilkinson CBE PRI 1878 – 1971 HARROW SCHOOL Oil and gouache on paper, signed lower right Image size: 30 × 45 inches (76 × 114 cm) Original frame Provenance Commissioned by L...

Luigi Ferrazi Italian Fl: 1880 - 1888 After the Carnival Oil on canvas, signed, dated '1885' and inscribed 'Venezia' Image size: 24 ¾ x 33 ½ inches (63 x 85 cm) Contemporary gilt ...

Circle of Cornelis Dusart Dutch 1660 - 1704 Portrait of a Man Oil on panel Image size: 7¾ x 5¼ inches Giltwood frame Cornelis Dusart Cornelis ...

Circle of Mary Beale 1633 - 1699 Portrait of a Gentleman Oil on canvas Image size: 30 x 25 inches Contemporary gilt frame Mary Beale was the daughter of a Suffolk clergyman.She married Charles Beale...

English School, (circa 1600) Portrait of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke Oil on panel, oval Image size: 29¼ x 23⅞ inches Painted wooden frame Provenance: 176, Collection of Francis Greville, 1st Earl of Warwick. The Trustees of the Lord Brooks’ Settlement, (removed from Warwick Castle). Sotheby’s, London, 22nd March 1968, lot 81. Painted onto wooden panel, this portrait shows a dark haired gentleman in profile sporting an open white shirt. On top of this garments is a richly detailed black cloak, decorated with gold thread and lined with a sumptuous crimson lining. With the red silk inside it’s all very expensive and would fall under sumptuary laws – so this is a nobleman of high degree. It’s melancholic air conforms to the contemporary popularity of this very human condition, evident in fashionable poetry and music of the period. In comparison to our own modern prejudices, melancholy was associated with creativity in this period. This portrait appeared in the earliest described list of pictures of Warwick castle dating to 1762. Compiled by collector and antiquary Sir William Musgrave ‘taken from the information of Lord & Lady Warwick’ (Add. MSS, 5726 fol. 3) is described; ‘8. Earl of Essex – an original by Zuccharo – seen in profile with black hair. Holding a black robe across his breast with his right hand.’ As tempting as it is to imagine that this is a portrait of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl Essex, we might take this with a pinch of salt. Its identification with this romantic and fatal Elizabethan might well have been an attempt to add romance to Warwick Castle’s walls. It doesn’t correspond all that well with Essex’s portraits around 1600 after his return from Cadiz. Notably, this picture was presumably hung not too far away from the castle’s two portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. The first, and undoubtedly the best, being the exquisite coronation portrait that was sold by Lord Brooke in the late 1970s and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The second, described as being ‘a copy from the original at Ld Hydes’, has yet to resurface. The portrait eventually ended up being hung in the State Bedroom of Warwick Castle. Archival documents present one other interesting candidate. The Greville family’s earliest inventory of paintings, made in 1630 at their home Brooke House in Holborn, London, describes five portraits of identified figures. All five belonged to the courtier, politician and poet Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628), 1st Baron Brooke, and were hung in the ‘Gallerie’ of Brooke House behind yellow curtains. One of them was described as being of ‘Lord of Pembrooke’, which is likely to have been William Herbert (1580-1630), 3rd Earl of Pembroke. William was the eldest son of Greville’s best friend’s sister Mary Sidney, and was brought up in the particularly literary and poetically orientated household which his mother had supported. Notably, the 3rd Earl was one of the figures that Shakespeare’s first folio was dedicated to in 1623. The melancholic air to the portrait corresponds to William’s own pretensions as a learned and poetic figure. The richness of the robe in the painting, sporting golden thread and a spotted black fabric, is indicative of wealth beyond that of a simple poet or actor. The portrait’s dating to around the year 1600 might have coincided with William’s father death and his own rise to the Pembroke Earldom. This period of his life too was imbued with personal sadness, as an illicit affair with a Mary Fitton had resulted in a pregnancy and eventual banishment by Elizabeth I to Wilton after a short spell in Fleet Prison. His illegitimate son died shortly after being born. Despite being a close follower of the Earl of Essex, William had side-stepped supporting Devereux in the fatal uprising against the Queen and eventually regained favour at the court of the next monarch James I. His linen shirt is edged with a delicate border of lace and his black cloak is lined on the inside with sumptuous scarlet and richly decorated on the outside with gold braid and a pattern of embroidered black spots. Despite the richness of his clothes, William Herbert has been presented in a dishevelled state of semi-undress, his shirt unlaced far down his chest with the ties lying limply over his hand, indicating that he is in a state of distracted detachment. It has been suggested that the fashion for melancholy was rooted in an increase in self-consciousness and introspective reflection during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In contemporary literature melancholy was said to be caused by a plenitude of the melancholy humor, one of the four vital humors, which were thought to regulate the functions of the body. An abundance of the melancholia humor was associated with a heightened creativity and intellectual ability and hence melancholy was linked to the notion of genius, as reflected in the work of the Oxford scholar Robert Burton, who in his work ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’, described the Malcontent as ‘of all others [the]… most witty, [who] causeth many times divine ravishment, and a kind of enthusiamus… which stirreth them up to be excellent Philosophers, Poets and Prophets.’ (R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, London, 1621 in R. Strong, ‘Elizabethan Malady: Melancholy in Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraits’, Apollo, LXXIX, 1964). Melancholy was viewed as a highly fashionable affliction under Elizabeth I, and her successor James I, and a dejected demeanour was adopted by wealthy young men, often presenting themselves as scholars or despondent lovers, as reflected in the portraiture and literature from this period. Although the sitter in this portrait is, as yet, unidentified, it seems probable that he was a nobleman with literary or artistic ambitions, following in the same vain as such famous figures as the aristocratic poet and dramatist, Edward de Vere...

Howard Jenkins Flourished 1920 - 1950 Art Gallery, Portico, Dark Evening Oil on board, signed verso and inscribed Image size: 12 x 10 inches Contemporary frame

Philip Campbell Curtis American 1907 - 2000 Reflections Oil on board, signed and dated 1960 Image size: 12 ½ x 5 ½ inches Original frame

Keith Holmes Contemporary Walmer Oil on board, signed Image size: 15 ¼ x 9 ¾ inches Framed Born in Richmond, North Yorkshire, Keith studied fine art at West Surrey College of Art and Design before qualifying as a paper conservator at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts. In 1977 he was visiting professor on the conservation programme run by New York State University, where he taught conservation studies at postgraduate level. He is a fellow of the International Institute of Conservation and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He divides his time between work as a practising artist, a freelance conservator and the renovation of a disused chapel/boathouse where he lives with two Bengal cats...

Gordon Scott 1914 - 2016 Crescent Grove, Clapham Oil on canvas Image size: 18 x 24 inches Contemporary style frame GORDON SCOTT EXHIBITION AT DARNLEY F...