Animal Paintings and Figure Paintings for Sale

The Mark Mitchell collection includes paintings and drawings of animals, as well as figure paintings. The first category ranges from major oil paintings by John Lewis Riley, a famous copyist after Landseer’s work, to exquisitely finished pencil drawings by the living wildlife artist, Raymond Ching, taking in on its way studies from the atelier of the early 20thh century American artist, Georges Feldkirchner, and work by his British peer, Arthur Wardle.

Paintings of animals are particularly popular today in Britain, the land of George Stubbs and Landseer, but from the 16th century onwards there were many accomplished animal painters in continental Europe, especially in Flanders, the Netherlands, and in France (where the subject tended to be linked to sculpture). Before the 16th century animals frequently carried symbolic weight when they appeared in paintings – although Dürer and Leonardo are notable for their accurate observational studies of birds and cats. Figure painting is a more ubiquitous, enduring and representative genre; the earliest known piece of art is of a masked huntsman, from 11-18,000 years ago.

The figure paintings in Mark Mitchell’s collection have deservedly formed one of the more popular categories, perhaps due to a minor sub-genre of female figures, often posed in chairs within an harmonious interior. These may have started as exercises or studies, and would, before the 19th century, probably have been finished as symbolic paintings depicting virtues or classical goddesses. Their more domestic descendants, in the 19th and 20th centuries, are painted dispassionately, as elements of a still life: they are far from portraits, but when hung in an interior bring it alive, both decoratively and through the evocation of companionship or movement. The collection also includes studies from the nude, and paintings of groups of figures; here the work of Albert Ludovici, a friend of Whistler, and of Robert Duckworth Greenham have been particularly strong.