Continental paintings for sale

Mark Mitchell’s collection of Continental paintings includes two large groups of works by Belgians and Scandinavians. These artists, although trained in the foremost Académies des Beaux-Arts, and exhibiting in Salons, Worlds Fairs, and international commercial galleries, have for some reason dropped off the critical radar compared with their more famous peers.

Mark is endeavouring to rescue their art and their reputations: in many cases their paintings can hold their own against those by more celebrated painters. The Belgian Jan van den Eeckhoudt (1875-1946), for instance, was associated with Théo van Rysselberghe and Matisse, and influenced by the Nabis and the fauves. The best of his work sets flat, decorative patterns in saturated colours against a strongly three-dimensional composition, constructed on geometrical principles which he learnt from Cézanne, and creating a vibrant tension within the painting. Likewise, the Danish painter Sigvard Marius Hansen (1859-1938) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen and subsequently won numerous prizes for his art. His landscapes are notable for his ability to reproduce the effects of diffused and refracted light, and to create a powerful and convincing illusion of spatial recession; he conjures evocative visions of the Danish countryside.

Other important works in our collection of Continental paintings include still life arrangements by Belgian artists such as Robert Boudry, Charles Swyncop, Joseph De Belder and Jan Verdoodt; their work has proved immensely popular. They share with their better-known peers the double impact of good art: that it should have a immediate effect upon and appeal to the viewer, and that it should, on further examination, reveal intellectual, emotional and technical depth. We also carry work by French, Spanish and Austrian artists amongst our stock of Continental paintings for sale; we wish to promote these pictures for their striking aesthetic and technical qualities, in defiance of their previous neglect.