Highlights at Classic Art London as it Returns to London Galleries
Classic Art London returns for its second year from Monday 22 June to Friday 3 July, celebrating pre-contemporary art at leading dealers across St. James’s, Mayfair and environs. Gallery exhibitions encompass all media and genres spanning antiquity to modernity.
An informative and enjoyable programme of events takes place concurrently, including a dedicated Talks Thursday on 25 June, supported by Lockton, at The Society of Antiquaries, with many talks relating to the selling exhibitions. Speakers and panellists include art historians, academics, museum curators and internationally-renowned experts.
Tudor Highlights
Elizabeth I: Queen & Court is at Philip Mould & Company, featuring truly outstanding Tudor works. These include the earliest surviving life-sized, full-length portraits painted during Queen Elizabeth I’s lifetime, alongside some of the key figures of her reign and close circle of courtiers and confidantes. A number of works are on loan especially.
Among important works to be exhibited by The Limner Company is an early 17th century portrait by the English goldsmith and limner Nicholas Hilliard, court miniaturist to Elizabeth I and James VI/I.
One of Talks Thursday’s events takes a close look at Tudor Portraits – in a setting filled with many of the Society of Antiquaries’ Tudor portraits. Moderated by Alexandra Ault, Society of Antiquaries, with Charlotte Bolland of the National Portrait Gallery, and Lawrence Hendra from Philip Mould & Co.
Old Masters Exhibitions
Colnaghi London presents In Vino Veritas: The Visual Rhetoric Of Wine, exploring the role of wine within the Western iconographic tradition. Bringing together archaeological material alongside Old Master painting and sculpture, the exhibition traces a shift from wine’s function within communal and ritualised contexts to its later articulation as a vehicle for allegorical and symbolic meaning. Alongside this is a second show, exploring a period of transformation in Nordic painting spanning the late nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth.
Trinity Fine Art will present an important early work by Orazio Gentileschi of The Penitent St. Jerome. Painted from life, the 72-year-old model was a pilgrim whose experience is recorded.
Charles Beddington Ltd is showcasing Venetian view paintings and works on paper of the 18th and 19th centuries including examples by Guardi and Tiepolo. At Daniel Katz Gallery there is an extensive sculpture exhibition spanning antiquity to modernity, including renaissance and baroque works.
Paul Mitchell Ltd, purveyors and makers of the finest antique and replica frames, will open their doors during the event for special tours of their studio and talks on the importance of the correct frame. They reveal the improvements their frames have made to many museum-owned artworks.
Anglo-American Art History
The 250th anniversary of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence has prompted an important exhibition by Ben Elwes Fine Art looking at the cross-fertilization of art and artists during those founding years. One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution will include works by Benjamin West (1738-1820), John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and a fine landscape by John Taylor (1735-1806).
A panel discussion on the same subject is part of Talks Thursday on 25 June, with an impressive line-up of speakers on the subject: Paul Staiti, Professor at Mount Holyoke College and author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes; Adam Chen of Harvard University and co-curator of Life and Liberty: The Revolution in American Art which opens at Tate Britain in June, and Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of The King’s Pictures at the Royal Collection Trust.
500 Years of Drawings & Works on Paper
The 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable ensures a focus on this British artist and his influence during Classic Art London. Alexander Clayton-Payne presents a group of five previously unknown drawings by Constable dating from around 1806 to 1815 in his exhibition and Christopher Baker, editor of The Burlington Magazine, moderates a talk on Constable at 250 with a panel that includes leading authority Anne Lyles.
At Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, there is a special exhibition of 18th and 19th century British watercolours and drawings of landscapes and nature, whilst Stephen Ongpin Fine Art will show architectural, decorative, ornamental and design drawings dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
With the rehabilitation of historic women artists continuing apace, and museums urgently growing their holdings, Karen Taylor Fine Art has formed an exhibition of works by British women artists covering the years 1780 to 1920. Karen says: “I am determined to increase the visibility of the numerous women artists whose work has been lost from view, due to the numerous obstacles which they have had to overcome. All too frequently their legacy was not assured.”
In the setting of Karen Taylor’s exhibition, Dr Rachel Sloan of the Courtauld Gallery will discuss the work of Harriet Lister (1751-1821) and other women artists on Monday 29 June. Sloan curated A View of One’s Own, Landscapes by British Women Artists 1760-1860 at the Courtauld Gallery (28 January – 20 May 2026) and organised a conference Rediscovering and Re-presenting the Work of Women Artists at the Courtauld Institute in March 2026.
Portraiture
After Elizabethan portraits at Philip Mould & Co, and 16th to 19th century miniatures at The Limner Company, a more modern approach to portraiture can be found within the exhibition at David Messum Fine Art, After Sargent: Wilfrid and Jane de Glehn, and the Monod circle. After the death of their friend Sargent in 1925, Wilfrid de Glehn (1870-1951) and his American artist wife Jane Erin Emmet (1873-1961) continued a ‘way of seeing’ shaped by Paris training, studio discipline and the exhilaration of plein air travel. Joined by cousin Lucien Monod at Cannes, their circle moved between London, Provence and St Tropez, with American ties under-writing both freedom and fragility. The exhibition traces that network through some 100 portraits, landscapes, figure studies and still-lifes.
Rountree Tryon and Fine Art Commissions are staging a joint exhibition, Lasting Impressions: Portraits and landscapes from the eighteenth century to the present day, focusing on figures and landscapes, with a nod to classic country house art and commissioned portraits. Fine Art Commissions will be hosting two life drawing events with their artist Isabel Douglas-Hamilton on 25 June and 2 July.
Portraits also have a significant presence in the Anglo-American show at Ben Elwes Fine Art, and there are several portrait busts at Daniel Katz Gallery’s sculpture exhibition.
The Senses in Art
A number of special events explore the idea of the senses conveyed through art. On 9 June in the run-up to the main event, organised by Classic Art London with Handel Hendrix House museum, the art historian, author and Country Life art market expert Huon Mallalieu will discuss his recent book, The Ear of the Beholder, with the museum’s lead curator Claire Davies. This event is part of Handel’s Salon Season and bookings for this talk should be made via handelhendrix.org.
A Sense of Scent in Art is a collaboration with Floris, the esteemed perfumiers on Jermyn Street. Selected works at CAL galleries are ‘paired’ with Floris fragrances, providing a dual sensory experience, as the scent evoked by each picture will be in situ. Illustrated tour sheets to follow will be at Floris and participating galleries, and there is also a talk at Floris on 1 July followed by a guided tour of the scent-paired artworks.
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