Forgotten masters

Enduring images - part II

The exhibition will now be held at 13 Harley Street.

30th June - 7th July 

A second look at artistic reputation: the reasons that some painters rise whilst others fall. The exhibition focuses on the 19th century, on the worthy artists caught between the decline of traditionalism and the rise of modernism.  It remains an overlooked and undervalued area of the art market, but one of the most researchable.  Dominic Fine Art seeks to unearth fresh talent and to repair the reputations of “Forgotten Masters.

London Art Week

Chinese Room, 13 Harley Street

London, W1G 9QG

Why the 19th Century?

Perhaps unlike any other period in Art History, the 19th century offers a compromise between the quantity and quality of available material.

The literature of the period, though plentiful, did pass through the filter of the printing press. Such Limitations would lessen in the next century, culminating in the sprawling internet, where information proliferates to the point that it is not only unmanageable in quantity, but unselective in quality. By contrast its  scarcity in previous periods leaves few possibilities for revisiting the lives of these misunderstood and long-dead artists.

The 19th century is unique, in that it isn’t burdened with a surfeit of information, but it is plentiful enough for a researcher to traverse new ground.

This is also true of the artists practicing. More people are painting, because more people can afford to buy paintings, and though talent is unlikely to go unnoticed in an intimate market like the Renaissance, it can be overlooked in a expansive one. Thankfully the 19th century is large enough to allow for the possibility of finding “forgotten masters”, but not to the point that they are impossible to recognise.