By the time this appears London Art Week will be over. I missed the preview and only got there on Thursday, but I can report that it appears to have been a great success with numerous red dots on exhibits. Perhaps more to the point from the perspective of those who follow these posts, it took place in an exceptionally friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Of course, dealers would not exist if there was no money to be made, but equally most people involved are really passionate about what they do and want to share that passion. This is really not the same sort of business as the market for pork belly futures, where one unkindly suspects  many traders have never even seen a pork belly. If however there are City bonuses to be spent, there are plenty of things here you could do worse than to buy. Obviously one can’t write about everyone, even though the quality was very high throughout, so here are a few favourites.

Mark Weiss in Jermyn Street is focusing on Tudor and Jacobean portraiture and the role of clothing at Court. The gallery is showing several immaculately tailored reconstructions of court clothing alongside portraits where the sitters are wearing the same sort of attire. A portrait of Sir Roland Cotton by Paul van Somer shows him, as the Gallery states, wearing one of the most resplendent costume pieces of this period and the silk doublet and breeches are virtuosically tailored with deep slashing on the doublet to reveal a layer of blue silk beneath. The original costume was lovingly preserved by his family and given by his descendants to the V and A in 1938, where it remains.

Even finer, in my judgement at least, is the portrait, also painted on panel, of Lady Jane Thornagh by William Larkin, painted in 1617, a couple of years before the artist’s death. It combines an immaculate provenance by descent within the Thornagh family, superb condition with the impasto fully preserved and an exceptional and wonderful surface, and is of outstanding quality. Again I quote from the Gallery’s notes The intricately embroidered and brilliantly coloured costume is kaleidoscopic in effect. The motifs include sea monsters, maritime birds and flora, emerging from stylised silvery ripples of water on her skirt. Her bodice is decorated with crimson-crested woodpeckers, insects, grapes, and flowers punctuated by silver spangles and swirling patterns of golden thread. They are depicted with painstaking attention and each brushstroke imitates individual stitches. This picture had an intriguing red dot on its label and I understand has recently been sold, possibly to a museum.

Bowman in Duke Street is showing one of Emily Young’s large sculpted heads in St James Churchyard: her large pieces are very popular and well suited to incorporation in a garden setting – if anyone wants something along these lines designed do feel free to let us know! There are several good Rodin bronzes in the gallery itself. Faunesse Debout was originally conceived as part of Rodin’s Gates of Hell and the version here, cast from the original plaster in 1945 on behalf of the Musee Rodin, is very fine. 

Stephen Ongpin in Mason’s Yard is showing a group of drawings by Giovanni Baptista Tiepolo, such as this one of a Centaur Carrying off a Young Faun, and by his son Giovanni Dominico.  The father’s works show a remarkable economy of line used to suggest volume. They appear to have mostly been produced by way of working out ideas for more finished works in other media. The son’s are often highly finished drawings in their own right. Many of these drawings, including a head of an old man that I reckoned the finest of them all, have been sold, but some still remain.

There are some very grand things available while the same galleries also offer material within the reach of, admittedly comfortably off, private collectors. For example at Dickinson in Jermyn Street, there is a wonderful pair of Guardi Capriccios for a seven figure price, but also a very fine Portrait of a Jockey by Frederic Whiting (a less fashionable but very able contemporary of Munnings) for about £12,000.

If you turn up, as you should not hesitate to do when the next one occurs at the beginning of December this year, gallery owners will be genuinely glad to see you and will happily talk about what they offer. Chris