Dickinson London is pleased to show a selection of Old Master and Impressionist paintings, with highlights including examples by Reynolds, Zoffany and Renoir. Our team will also welcome visitors to view the exhibited works first hand at 58 Jermyn Street.
Among the Old Master highlights are Ulysses seizing Astyanax from Andromache (c. 1758-59) by German-born Grand Tourist favourite Johann Zoffany, painted just before he moved to London in 1760 and inspired by the classicism of Poussin. Here, Zoffany gives us a dramatic scene from the Trojan War narrative.
The gallery will also show a recently rediscovered Caricature of Lord Bruce, Thomas Brudenell-Bruce, later 1st Earl of Ailesbury; the Hon. John Ward; Joseph Leeson, Jnr, later 2nd Earl of Milltown, and Joseph Henry of Straffan (c. early 1751) by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This witty painting, which gently satirises a group of aristocrats in Rome, shows the lighter side of the Grand Tour and has descended in the family of one of the subjects at a private Irish estate.
New to the market is Robert Lefevre’s portrait of The Emperor Napoleon (1814), in which Bonaparte stands in a Neoclassical colonnade filled with sculpted figures of monarchs and philosophers. This year marks the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon, a ruler whose command of propaganda and imagery was as vital to his success as any military weapon.
The exhibition also includes examples by Sir Peter Lely, Edward Lear, Jacques-Antoine Vallin, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.