Collection Highlight: Contemporary Works

Depictions of the male form in art goes back centuries, as shown in our collection, which spans from the 17th Century to the present day.

Unsurprisingly, contemporary artists are still fascinated by the subject and are an important part of the collection. In this post, we highlight five artists, aged between 26 and 88, who, while part of a long tradition, create unique and personal work in the late 20th and 21st Century.

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Felipe Chavez, (Colombian b.1994), Boy, 2019, indian ink on paper, signed and dated (verso), 59cm x 84cm, framed, £1400

Felipe Chavez, Boy, (2019): Born in 1994, Chavez is a Colombian artist now based in London, who cites Egon Schiele and Francis Bacon as strong influences in his paintings. Working primarily in the medium of Indian Ink on paper, he often uses his own body to explore the male form and its relationship with sexuality and space as a gay man, constantly experimenting with the concept of the nude and of the self portrait.

Tom Merrifield, (British b.1932), Male Swimmer, 1990, ink and watercolour on paper, signed and titled (lower middle), 30cm x 24cm (50cm x 43cm framed), £950

Tom Merrifield, Male Swimmer, (1990): Originally from Australia, Merrifield is a London-based artist working from his studio in Hampstead. Born in 1932, he moved to the UK in 1956 where he had a successful career as a dancer before finally leaving the stage to focus on his art. An internationally acclaimed sculptor, he is most famous for his portrayals of dancers and athletes whom he always sketches and sculpts from life.

Ronald Bowen, (American b.1944), Jeune Homme nu Assis, 1981, coloured pencil on paper, 138cm x 107cm, framed, price on request

Ronald Bowen, Jeune Homme nu Assis, (1981): Born in Soth Carolina in 1944, Bowen moved to Paris in 1970 where he still lives and paints from his studio in Montmartre, overlooking the city’s rooftops. An artist of international renown, his works are mesmerizing, both in their qualities and technical ability. Bowen is known for his expertly rendered fragments of reality, inspired in part by the upsurge of the American Photorealist movement of the 1970s but even more deeply by a desire to apply the style and techniques of the Italian Renaissance painters to his own everyday environment. Something which is not readily apparent in reproduction, and needs to be emphasised in case missed, is this is a pencil drawing of epic proportions, measuring 137cm x 108cm.

Eileen Healy, (Irish), Male Nude, 1995, Charcoal on paper, signed and dated (lower right), 39cm x 36cm (50cm x 40cm in mount), unframed, £700

Eileen Healy, Male Nude, (1995): Healy is an award-winning Irish figurative artist working mainly in pastel and oil, and always from life at her studio in Cork. While she paints both men and women, her male nudes are often seen from the back or looking away from the viewer (as in the case of the sketches in the collection), capturing intimate moments and the sometimes hidden vulnerability of the masculine body. "Drawing from life is for me a way of life and the backbone of my work. It keeps my work alive."

Ian Cook (Scottish b.1951), Torso 7, 2018, acrylic on paper, signed (lower right), 78 cm x 55cm, framed, £1,950

Ian Cook, Torso 7, (2018): Born in Paisley in 1951, Cook graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1972. Still based in Scotland, he has exhibited extensively across the UK and Europe ever since. After two travelling scholarships to Spain and Africa he focused primarily on indigenous subject matter. Many of his works are sourced from Latin American, African and European mythology and folklore. Cook’s work, especially with regards to the colour palette and mood of his large and colourful graphic muscular male nudes such as this one, is reminiscent of artists like Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky as well as the models from 1950’s physique pictorial magazines.

Please do not hesitate to contact Henry should you have any queries about any of the pictures in the collection.

Catalogue: £500 or less

This month, Henry Miller Fine Art has compiled a catalogue of over 60 works in the collection, all of which are £500 or less, and include drawings, paintings, etchings, prints and photographs, spanning over 100 years of art history. Here’s a small selection to whet your appetite…

The full catalogue is available HERE

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The price of all unframed works includes UK domestic shipping, with international postage at cost. Regrettably, for framed works, the additional cost of shipping will have to be charged, but again at cost. (Delivery in the London area may be possible for free.) All unframed works are displayed within mounts, unless specified otherwise.

French School, Academic Study, 19th Century, Red chalk on paper, 60cm x 48cm, (73cm x 52cm framed), £500

French School, Academic Study, 19th Century: Drawings and paintings of the nude were central to academic art training in France from the 16th century onwards. This red chalk drawing (and the others of the same ilk in the collection) would have be completed in one of the many art schools in Paris. Only after acquiring enough skill were artists permitted to draw a posed live model. Although this beautifully rendered study would not have meant to be sold and seen as a ‘works of art’ at the time, it can certainly be appreciated as such now.

Louis Jean-Baptiste Igout, (French 1837-1881), 16 Academic Studies, c.1870s, Albumen prints mounted on card, 21.5cm x 14cm (40cm x 30cm in mount), unframed, £450

Louis Jean-Baptiste Igout, (French 1837-1881), 16 Academic Studies, c.1870s: With the arrival of photography, it didn’t take long for the nude to be a regular subject of choice for Victorian amateurs, but while there certainly was a market for early erotic and pornographic images, these academic studies of male nudes would have been taken to be sold as an artist’s teaching aid for life drawing classes. The classical poses are identical to those created by life models from the 16th century onwards.

Eric Kahn, (German 1904-1979), Figure Study, 1955, Sanguine (red chalk) on paper, 38cm x 24cm (50cm x 40cm in mount), unframed, £500

Eric Kahn, (German 1904-1979), Figure Study, 1955: Kahn was a German Expressionist painter whose career was cut short by the rise of Nazism and his imprisonment at Welzheim concentration camp. After the war, he moved to England where he was able to continue drawing and painting, exhibiting extensively throughout his life. As one of the forgotten generation of Jewish German artists, much of his early work has been lost, although the Berardo Collection in Portugal has a large selection of Kahn’s post-war work. He was especially productive in the 1950’s when he exhibited regularly in London and abroad, and this is very representative of his work of that period.

Patrick Sarfati, (French b.1958), In Memory of James Dean, 1982, Silver print, 30cm x 20cm (50cm x 40cm in mount), unframed, £500.

Patrick Sarfati, (French b.1958), In Memory of James Dean, 1982: Born in 1958, Sarfati started taking photographs in his early twenties and soon became the go-to photographer in 1980’s Paris, working with Keith Haring, Grace Jones and Jean-Paul Gaultier amongst others. During that time, he also regularly modelled for fellow artists Pierre et Gilles. An homage to the 1950’s and Jean Genet, this picture of a young and sultry sailor takes its title from the model’s tattoo and is reminiscent of Fassbinder’s film Querelle de Brest with Brad Davies in the title role which was released that year.

Rustam Khamdamov, (Usbekistan b.1944), Seated Male Figure, 1994, Pencil on paper, signed and dated ‘94’ (lower left), 31cm x 22cm (50cm x 40cm in mount), unframed., £500

Rustam Khamdamov, (Uzbekistan b.1944), Seated Male Figure, 1994: Born in 1944, Khamdamov is an acclaimed Russian artist as well as an award-winning film maker who has been called a legend in his home country for being the first living artist to have his work added to the Hermitage’s Gallery of Modern Art collection. This beautiful drawing is part of a series of seated and standing male figures which all have a strong art-deco feel about them while also being reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s homo-erotic works from the 1950’s. There is something both very timeless and modern about them, sexy without being overtly erotic.

Please contact Henry by phone or email, should you have any queries about any of the works in the collection. High resolutions images of all the works can be provided upon request.

Collection Highlight: Yves Paradis (French, b.1955), by Olivier Joly

With all exhibitions and art fairs in London (and worldwide) now cancelled for the foreseeable future, access to art is understandably limited. As it is not possible for you to come to me, I have decided to come to you and present a series of short pieces highlighting selected pictures from my collection. This is the sixth in the series.

I hope that by providing extended information about certain works, you can become acquainted with artists you may not know, or if you are already familiar with them, develop a further understanding of particular works. In the very least, it will hopefully distract you from the news for 5 mins!

(N.B. If you are reading this in your email feed, the piece reads better on my website. Just click the title and it will take you to my blog.)

Hommage á Constantin Cavafy, 1986.

Yves Paradis is a French photographer whose work was almost synonymous with gay imagery throughout the 1980’s, appearing regularly on the pages of Europe’s most popular gay magazines. His soft and tender black and white photographs captured a kind of romanticised vision of gay life, away from the reality and excitements of the scene, making them as timeless as they are very much of their time.

Born in Brittany in 1955, Paradis grew up in rural France where, at the age of thirteen, one of his teachers introduced him to photography, which, for someone who struggled with writing, became a life line. His father, a farmer, quickly realised how important it was for him and set up a studio and dark room in their attic so he could experiment and develop his own pictures.

Sur la Route Delphes, 1984.

Little did he know that it would give his son the opportunity to explore his burgeoning homosexuality, taking naked photographs of himself and his then boyfriend. As a gay teenage boy in the late 1960’s Paradis soon realised that photography was going to be the only way for him to approach – and interest – the boys he fancied at school. He once said that he started taking photographs to recapture time and possess the images of boys that were already disturbing him.

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Images below: Le Dormeur du Val, 1993; What do I see?, 1984.

While his first photographs were of handsome friends on holiday and army mates during national service, he spent the 1970’s working as a journalist and focusing on reportage style photography. And despite still experimenting with homo-erotic compositions during that time, he still thought of art photography as a hobby rather than a career. 

As a young and engaged gay activist, he welcomed the arrival of Gai Pied, France’s first mainstream gay magazine, in 1979. He soon sent them a series of photographs he took of two soldiers kissing on an army tank, which they loved and published as part of a big spread. From that moment on, Paradis worked regularly with them as well as other European gay publications for over a decade, creating some of the most iconic images of the gay 1980’s.

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Images below: Sur le Pont des Arts à Paris, 1986; Le Jeune Homme aux Pied Nus, 1986.

In contrast with a lot of fantasy and fetishist gay photography of the time though, his pictures usually featured young men of the ‘boy-next-door’ and ‘bit-of-rough’ types, definitely sexy but not physically perfect, making them more realistic as well as more romantic.

Paradis did not embrace the gay scene of bars and clubs and while he sometimes found willing models via ads in the gay press, he used to meet most of them randomly on the streets of Paris. Many were straight boys – or so they told him – but he still managed to convince them, not always easily, to get naked for him in front of the camera.

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Images below: Le Garçon qui Attend, 1992; Nus dans la Grenier, 1985.

In 1991, Aubrey Walter published ‘Joie de Vivre’, a collection of his photographs, now sadly out of print, introducing Paradis’ work to a British audience. And while he retired from photography soon after the book’s publication, his work is being re-discovered by a new generation of millennials, potentially craving a sense of innocence and nostalgia currently missing from their overly self conscious and insta-friendly world.

Henry Miller Fine Art has a selection of Yves Paradis available for sale. For details, contact Henry Miller and click the link HERE

Collection Highlight: Patrick Hennessy (Irish 1915-1980)

With all exhibitions and art fairs in London (and worldwide) now cancelled for the foreseeable future, access to art is understandably limited. As it is not possible for you to come to me, I have decided to come to you and present a series of short pieces highlighting selected pictures from my collection. This is the fifth in the series.

I hope that by providing extended information about certain works, you can become acquainted with artists you may not know, or if you are already familiar with them, develop a further understanding of particular works. In the very least, it will hopefully distract you from the news for 5 mins!

(N.B. If you are reading this in your email feed, the piece reads better on my website. Just click the title and it will take you to my blog.)

Patrick Hennessy, Kassim by the Sea, 1978, oil on canvas, 62cm x 87cm, Henry Miller Fine Art.

Patrick Hennessy was born in Cork in 1915. His father died when he was only 2 years old and after his mother re-married, they moved to Scotland in 1917.

After graduating from school in Arbroath, he enrolled at the Dundee School of Art in 1933, where he excelled, earning a travelling scholarship to France and Italy in 1938. Whilst at college, he met fellow artist Harry Robertson Craig who will become his lifelong partner, although it won’t be until 1946 that they will share adjoining studios as well as a personal relationship that will last until Hennessy’s death in 1980.

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images below: ‘The Painter Friends’, 1960; Patrick Hennessy by H. Robertson Craig; H. Robertson Craig, by Patrick Hennessy, oil on board, Private Collection.

Following his travels around Europe, during which he met up with ‘the Two Roberts’ (Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde – see earlier blog post for further information), Hennessy returned to Ireland in 1939 where he was rapidly accepted by the artistic community, exhibiting with the Dublin Painters Society and the Royal Hibernian Academy, the latter electing him to membership in 1949.

Throughout his career, but especially in the early years, he made a living from flower paintings, still-lives and portrait commissions. Alongside this conventional output however, he also created a body of work which was far more personal and, for its time, ground-breaking. He addressed issues of masculinity, sexual identity and homosexuality, which, for post-war Ireland where it was still illegal and considered morally repugnant, was highly extraordinary and extremely brave. His work, De Profundis (1945), the painting which announced his presence on the Dublin art scene, unashamedly and very publicly linked himself to Oscar Wilde’s final book of the same name.

Men Bathing, Étretat, 1954, oil on canvas, Private Collection.

Some of his work may now seem tame to modern audiences. His exploration of homosexuality is coded, with figures set against land and seascapes, perhaps suggesting the social isolation and loneliness that many gay men would have experienced at the time. In a few of these paintings however, such as Men Bathing, Étretat (c.1954) and Kassim by the Sea (1976), another figure features in the distance, leaving the viewer to infer that the man in the foreground isn’t so alone after all!

Portrait-Figures (Self-Portrait), 1972, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Ireland Collection.

However, not all of Hennessy’s work was as coded. Paintings such as Portrait-Figures (Self-Portrait) (1972) and In the Hamman (c.1965), could not have been clearer as to what was intended. The Tuileries Gardens is a well-known cruising ground in Paris, and Hennessy places himself firmly within the picture. In the Hamman, undoubtedly inspired by Hennessy’s own experiences in Tangiers, follows the tradition of mid-19th century classical painters like J-A-D Ingres, who identified the Turkish bath as a place of erotic interest; except in Hennessy’s picture, the erotic charge is between two men.

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images below: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French 1780-1867), The Turkish Bath, 1862, Louvre Museum; Patrick Hennessy, In the Hammam, c.1965, Private Collection.

From the early 1960s, he and Robertson Craig spent their winters in Tangiers, where Hennessy’s health problems were eased by the warm climate. In 1970, the couple moved there permanently and stayed for about ten years. Not only did Morocco suit Hennessy’s health, but Tangiers offered a far more liberal attitude to homosexuality. While it was, and still is, illegal there, Tangiers in particular, had gained a bohemian reputation as a place where homosexuality was tolerated, and it therefore became a focal point for many gay men from Europe and the US.

Atlas Beach, 1976, oil on canvas, 62cm x 87cm, Henry Miller Fine Art.

Atlas Beach (1978), which shows the model Kassim again, depicts a well-known gay bar in Tangiers. At first glance, one may think the title refers to the beach in the painting; however this is Tangier City Beach and the painting actually name-checks the Charles Atlas Beach Bar, upon which the figures are standing; a client who was well acquainted with the place in the 1970s, observed that the picture depicts the then daily routine of local men coming to the bar in the afternoon, on the chance of a gay liaison.

Despite being often considered immoral as well as unfashionable, Hennessy had a successful career as a painter, exhibiting not only in Dublin, but also in London and America. He was undeniably a talented artist, and someone who made his own way, never bending to popular taste. The art critic Brian Fallon said of him “in Irish art he is a strange outsider, close in style perhaps to the RHA painters, but a thousand miles away from them in mentality”.

A major retrospective of Hennessy’s work Patrick Hennessy, De Profundis, held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2016, featured both Kassim by the Sea and Atlas Beach; for anyone interested in his work, the accompanying exhibition catalogue is still available online.

If you have any queries about the Hennessy paintings or other works in the collection, please do not hesitate to contact Henry by phone or email.


Collection Highlight: Antoine Calbet, Painter of Modern Life, by Patrick Bade.

With all exhibitions and art fairs in London (and worldwide) now cancelled for the foreseeable future, access to art is understandably limited. As it is not possible for you to come to me, I have decided to come to you and present a series of short pieces highlighting selected pictures from my collection. This is the fourth in the series.

This piece is written by the art historian and author, Patrick Bade. Many of you will have attended Patrick’s wonderful talks at the Coningsby Gallery. Let’s hope we shall all be able attend them again sometime soon!

Antoine Calbet, (French 1860-1944), Conversation, c.1905, Henry Miller Fine Art.

In 1863 the poet Charles Baudelaire published his celebrated and influential essay The Painter of Modern Life that summarized ideas he had developed in his Salon reviews of the 1840s. He appealed to artists to abandon the depiction of historical and mythological themes and instead to look around themselves and to find inspiration in modern Paris. “The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.” He predicted “The painter, the true painter to come will be he who wrests from the contemporary scene its epic side, and shows how great and poetic we are in our cravats and patent leather boots.”

Manet and Degas took up the challenge and in the years leading up to and following the turn of the century they were followed by such artists as James Tissot, Jean Béraud, Giuseppe de Nittis, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen, Ramon Casas, Antoine Calbet and for a short time even by the young Pablo Picasso.

Antoine Calbet (1860-1942) was initially trained in Montpellier and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he enrolled in the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel whose notorious Birth of Venus won plaudits and a gold medal in the Salon of 1863 from which Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe was rejected. Calbet acquired a slick and skillful academic technique to which he added elements borrowed from Degas and the Impressionists. Making his Salon debut in 1880 he enjoyed a highly successful career winning several medals including a silver medal in the Paris World Exhibition of 1900 in which Klimt and Sorolla also won medals. His best known and most easily seen works are the delightful panels depicting the cities of Nice, Evian, Nîmes and Grenoble in the luxurious Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyons.

Antoine Calbet, Ilustration for La Femme Nue, c.1900, Private Collection

The set piece Salon nudes that won Calbet so much success in his lifetime now look gaudy and vulgar. The simpering smiles and clichéd poses make the pictures seem slightly pornographic. So it comes as a surprise to discover what a subtle observer of modern life he was when worked as an illustrator. He may well have regarded his work as an illustrator of popular novels and Boulevard plays and magazines such as L’Illustration as a pot-boiling sideline but it would seem that this is where his true talent lay. His simple technique of working in charcoal heightened with white chalk and gouache on tinted paper enabled him to achieve extraordinary effects of light and atmosphere and of mood. He seems to have been particularly fascinated by the relatively novel effect of electric lighting. In a striking and highly original illustration to Henry Bataille’s popular play La Femme Nue he depicts a group of people in a dimly lit museum café silhouetted against brightly lit marble statues in the background.

The blatant eroticism of his Salon paintings attest the heterosexuality of the artist and his clientele, but once again his work as an illustrator indicates a far more wide-ranging and nuanced attitude to human sexuality. Amongst the authors with whom Calbet worked were the flamboyantly homosexual Jean Lorrain, pioneer of gay fiction and popularly known as the “ambassador from Sodom” and Pierre Louys whose work evinced a life-long obsession with Lesbianism.

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images below: Antoine de La Gandara (1862-1917), Portrait of Jean Lorrain; Felix Vallotton (1865-1925), Portrait of Pierre Louys, 1898.

There can be little doubt about Pierre Louys’ predominant heterosexuality though he was on terms of close friendship with gay authors André Gide and Oscar Wilde and enjoyed what can only be described as an “amitié amoureuse” with the equally straight Claude Debussy. Louys’ photographs of Debussy, particularly one of Debussy asleep in bed, demonstrate the tenderness and intimacy of their relationship. Wilde dedicated his play Salome to Louys. Even to accept such a dedication during the homophobic hullabaloo that surrounded Wilde at the time was an act of considerable courage. Louys was a man of exceptional beauty which was doubtless a factor in his friendship with gay men. Colette left a vivid description of Louys’ semi naked body after she witnesses a passionate quarrel between him and his lover, the actress Polaire, famous for her 16 inch waist and her 38 inch bust. It was, Colette wrote ,“a spectacle unknown to me, love in its youth and brutality, an offended lover, his naked torso, the play of his perfect muscles beneath his softly feminine skin, the bulges and hollows of his proud and indifferent body, the confident manner in which he had knelt, then lifted Polaire from the floor.”

All this provides context for one of Calbet’s most mysterious and intriguing images. It is clearly an illustration of an episode in a novel – perhaps by Jean Lorrain or Pierre Louys.

Antoine Calbet, Untitled Illustration, c.1905, Henry Miller Fine Art.

In what looks like a bourgeois living room we see a smartly dressed young man, cigarette in hand, seated in a comfortable armchair, leaning toward another young man, who stands stripped to his very revealing underwear, with his discarded clothing draped over a chair in the foreground. The fashionable handlebar moustaches of both place the scene firmly in its time. There is no precedent for such a scene in Western art. There is an undoubted erotic tension but the gravity and sobriety of the depiction removes any trace of the salacious or pornographic. We can only speculate at what is going on.

It says much about French attitudes that after a lifetime largely devoted to the exploration of erotic themes, both Calbet and Louys were made officers of the Légion d’Honneur.

Should you have any queries about Calbet’s work, please do not hesitate to get in contact with Henry, either by email or phone.

Collection Highlight: Copying from the Old Masters: Michael Murfin

With all exhibitions and art fairs in London (and worldwide) now cancelled for the foreseeable future, access to art is understandably limited. As it is not possible for you to come to me, I have decided to come to you and present a series of short pieces highlighting selected pictures from my collection. This is the second in the series.

I hope that by providing extended information about certain works,  you can become acquainted with artists you may not know, or if you are already familiar with them, develop a further understanding of particular works. In the very least, it will hopefully distract you from the news for 5 mins!

It goes without saying, that we wish everyone the best of health..

Michael Murfin (Britsh b.1954), After "The Triumph of Bacchus" by Velazquez', 2020, oil on canvas, 61 x 78cm, Henry Miller Fine Art

It is very easy to think of a copy of a painting, as nothing more than a poor imitation of the original. Nothing could be further from the truth. Copying from the old masters, seeking inspiration from those who have long since passed, is a practice that artists, including the old masters themselves, have engaged in for generations.

In 1879, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) set out for Madrid to study and copy Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). He was following in the footsteps of Édouard Manet (1832-1883) and many others, who had made the journey to the Museo del Prado in Madrid to study and copy, not only Velázquez, but the other Spanish masters, such as Zurbaran and El Greco. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), himself a prolific copier of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), observed in his journal how most great masters had copied throughout their lives:

Rubens was more than fifty years old when he was sent on a mission to the king of Spain, yet he spent his free time in copying the superb Italian originals that can still be seen in Madrid. In his youth he did an enormous amount of copying. This practice of copying, entirely neglected by modern schools, was the source of his immense knowledge…Herein lay the education of most great masters.

Such was the tradition of copying that two hundred years after Rubens had copied the Italian old masters, Delacroix was copying Rubens. By the late nineteenth century, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) had copied Delacroix. All copied to learn and understand the secrets of the masters they admired and to use what they had learnt to stimulate creativeness in their own work.

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Images below left to right:

Raphael, Portrait of Count Baldassare Castiglione, 1514-15, Musée du Louvre; Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Count Baldassare Castiglione after Raphael, 1630, The Courtauld Gallery.

Eugène Delacroix, The Good Samaritan, 1849, Private collection; Vincent van Gogh, The Good Samaritan, after Delacroix, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum.

The list of famous artists who copied is too numerous to mention. Sargent himself is recorded as having copied ten paintings after Velázquez, four after Frans Hals, a copy after El Greco, two watercolours after Raphael, and one after Alessandro Olivero, one after Titian, another after Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) and a study after Francisco Goya (1746-1828).

It goes without saying however, that copying an old master picture can be fraught with danger for an artist. A copy, if too literal or repetitive, will simply hide the style of the copier within the style of the original artist, and forever be unfavourably compared to the original. However, if the artist uses the secrets of the masters they admire to stimulate creativeness in their own work, something new can be created, despite its obvious reference to the original picture.

Sargent’s copy after Hals focuses on a detail of two figures from a much larger composition, to create a wonderfully composed double portrait, full of his vibrant brushstrokes. His painting Dwarf with a Dog, is another tour de force in its own right. In both pictures, Sargent’s extraordinary talent at capturing a lifelike essence in his subjects, even those long since dead, gives a vibrancy and intimacy to pictures, something which is slightly lacking in the originals.

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Images below left to right:

Frans Hals, The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company, 1627, Frans Hals Museum; John Singer Sargent, Two Heads from ‘The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard’, after Frans Hals, c.1880, Private collection.

In the manner of Diego Velázquez, Dwarf with a Dog, c.17th Century, Museo del Prado; John Singer Sargent, Dwarf with a Dog, after Velázquez, 1879, The Hispanic Society of America.

Continuing this tradition of borrowing and copying from the old masters is the British artist, Michael Murfin, a figurative artist of extraordinary talents. In an ongoing series of pictures, Michael seeks to explore and focus on the homoeroticism contained within works, which may be familiar to us all. To date, there are three works in the series:

In Exploring Géricault, 2011, Michael has taken a fragment of The Raft of Medusa, 1818-19, by the French romantic painter, Théodore Géricault. By changing the emphasis, he has entirely changed the mood and feeling of the original painting which described the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. Michael’s painting focuses only on the survivors and the imminent rescue, and in doing so, places the figure of the Haitian model Joseph centre stage, bare-chested, in all his glory. Géricault, as a supporter of the abolition of slavery, deliberately positioned the model, scarf in hand, as a symbol of support for the cause.

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Théodore Géricault, The Raft of Medusa, 1818-19, Musée du Louvre;

Michael Murfin, Exploring Géricault, 2011, Henry Miller Fine Art.

Hippolyte Flandrin’s (1805-1864), Jeune Homme nu Assis sur le Bord de la Mer, 1836, became an icon of gay culture in the 20th century. The composition has been borrowed repeatedly, particularly by photographers, including F. Holland Day and Wilhelm von Gloeden, and later by Robert Mapplethorpe, but reproduced less in paint, probably due to the complexity of the figure’s positioning. Murfin’s painting, After Flandrin, 2019, embraced this complexity, expertly rendering the lifelike quality of the picture. It is a masterclass in how to paint the human body.

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Hippolyte Flandrin’s (1805-1864), Jeune Homme nu Assis sur le Bord de la Mer, 1836, Louvre Museum.

Michael Murfin, After Flandrin, 2019, Private Collection, previously sold by Henry Miller Fine Art.

Michael’s latest painting after an old master picture, explores Diego Velázquez’s The Triumph of Bacchus. Popularly known as the Drinkers, or the Drunks, the original work places Bacchus centre stage, surrounded by local peasantry in period 17th century costume. The work represents Bacchus as the god who rewards men with wine, temporarily releasing them from their problems of everyday life. In Michael’s picture he focuses solely on the relationship between Bacchus and the only other mythical figure in the painting, someone who in the original plays a secondary role. This figure looks fondly, or perhaps longingly, upon Bacchus, who himself seems aware that he is being gazed upon, the focus creating an erotic context not present in the original.

Diego Velázquez, The Triumph of Bacchus, 1628-29, Museo del Prado.

Should you have any questions about any of Michael Murfin’s pictures, do not hesitate to get in contact, by email or phone. We look forward to seeing you, as soon as we emerge from the other side; whenever that may be!

Collection Highlight: Robert Colquhoun

With all exhibitions and art fairs in London (and worldwide) now cancelled for the foreseeable future, access to art is understandably limited. As it is not possible for you to come to me, I have decided to come to you and present a series of short pieces highlighting selected pictures from my collection.

I hope that by providing extended information about certain works,  you can become acquainted with artists you may not know, or if you are already familiar with them, develop a further understanding of particular works. In the very least, it will hopefully distract you from the news for 5 mins!

It goes without saying, that we wish everyone the best of health..

Robert Colquhoun (Scottish 1914-1962), Portrait of Robert MacBryde (1913-1966), c.1938, pencil on brown paper, signed (lower right) 28cm x 22cm (53cm x 45cm framed), £8,500.

Known as 'the Two Roberts', Colquhoun and MacBryde met at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933. Both were working class Scots from Ayrshire. They quickly became lovers and then lifelong partners, living together openly when homosexuality was still illegal. After a brief period in the Army Medical Corps, Colquhoun joined MacBryde in London in 1941. They were part of a group of poets and painters who had left Scotland in the 1940s, and moved to London. The Glasgow group, in turn, mixed with other artists and writers already in London, including Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, John Minton, John Craxton and Lucian Freud, to name but a few. Usually congregating in the bars and clubs of Fitzrovia and Soho, there are few memoirs of the time, that do not mention them, given the central role they played in the art scene at the time.

Soon after their move, Colquhoun had his first solo show at the Lefevre Gallery in June 1943, by then the most prestigious gallery in London for contemporary artists, followed up with a joint show of their work a year later.

Their also exhibited in several group shows at the Lefevre Gallery, including one in February 1946, alongside Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, Bacon and Freud. Works were bought by the Arts Council, the British Council, the Contemporary Art Society and the Imperial War Museum. Major art patrons added their work to their collections, including Sir Kenneth Clark, art historian, one time Director of the National Gallery and Keeper of the King's Pictures. In 1948, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, purchased works from the new wave of British artists; they selected Francis Bacon, Edward Burra, Lucian Freud, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde.

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, 1949.

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, 1949.

Despite their meteoric success in 1940s, by the early 1950s, their work was out of fashion with the rise of abstraction,and their life became increasingly tumultuous. Some notable commissions were received, such as set and costume designs for the Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden and King Lear at Stratford-upon-Avon, but by the mid 1950s, the couple were hardly painting at all.

Having been forced to leave their studio in London, the  pair moved to a variety of addresses, usually staying with friends until their hospitality ran out. Always short on money, letters to friends and patrons would often end with requests for financial support. Drink certainly played its part, and perhaps was the cause of their downward spiral.

A momentary respite came in 1957 with a major exhibition of Colquhoun's work at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, however, he would be dead only four years later at the age of 47. A penniless MacBryde then moved to Dublin, living off money given to him by friends, until, in 1966, he was run over and killed by a car, whilst dancing in the street outside a pub, aged 53.

Since their deaths, in later years, they have rightfully been recognised as two of the most influential artists of their generation, rather than simply as fixtures in the bohemian London post-war art scene. A major exhibition of their work, 'The Two Roberts: Colquhoun and MacBryde' was held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2015.

For further reading about the artists, see The Two Roberts: Colquhoun and MacBryde, by Patrick Elliott, Adrian Clark and Davy Brown (2014). The National Galleries of Scotland also produced a short video to accompany the exhibtion which is available to view on YouTube here

The best place to see their works online is via the ArtUK.org website.. for Colquhoun click here and for MacBryde click here

The portrait in my collection is from a time before the couple came to London. This sensitive pencil drawing, captures an intimate and tender moment, one partner drawing the other, before their extraordinary trajectory to the heights of the London art scene and beyond. There are two other recorded drawings of MacBryde by Colquhoun; one is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the other in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. The attribution of MacBryde as the sitter has been recently confirmed by the Senior Curator of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and is recorded in the Heinz Library, National Portrait Gallery, London.

If you would like any further information about the drawing, please do not hesitate to contact Henry by phone or email.

Exhibition: 9 December 2019 - 11 January 2020.

I am returning to the Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ, for an extended period across Christmas and the New Year. During this time there will be two completely separate exhibitions:

9-22 December 2019 - The exhibition will comprise of paintings and works on paper.

Opening times: Mon - Wed: 10am - 6pm / Thursdays and Fridays: 10am - 7pm / Saturdays: 12pm - 6pm / Sunday 15 Dec: Closed / Sunday 22 Dec: 12pm - 5pm.

28 December 2019 - 11 January 2020 - Photographic exhibition

Opening times: Sat 28 Dec: 12pm - 6pm / Mon & Tues 30 & 31 Dec: 12pm - 5pm / New Years Day: Closed / Thursdays & Fridays: 11am - 7pm / Saturday 4 & 11 Jan: 12pm - 6pm

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Exhibition: Coningsby Gallery: 16-21 September 19

I shall be taking my collection of paintings, works on paper and photography to the Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ from 16 - 21 September 2019. Please email me, if you would like to be invited to the private view.

Opening times: Mon - Wed: 10am - 6pm / Thursdays and Fridays 10am - 7pm / Saturday 12pm - 6pm

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Exhibition: Coningsby Gallery: 20 May - 1 June 2019

I shall be taking my collection of paintings, works on paper and photography to the Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ from 20 May - 1 June 2019. Please email me, if you would like to be invited to the private view.

Opening times: Mon 20/5: 10am - 6pm / Bank Holiday Monday 27/5: 1pm - 5pm. / Tuesdays & Wednesday 10am - 6pm / Thursdays and Fridays 10am - 7pm / Saturdays 12pm - 6pm / Sundays closed, unless by appointment.

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Exhibition: Battersea Decorative Fair 9-14 April 2019

 
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I have the pleasure of annoucing that I shall be exhibiting on Stand B22 at

The Spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair
9-14 April 2019
Battersea Park, London

If you would like complimentary tickets, please either contact me or click here

For opening times and visitor information click here
or find directions and a map here




'Michael Leonard' 8-27 Oct 2018 at Coningsby Gallery.

Henry Miller Fine Art is delighted to present Michael Leonard’s first London exhibiton in 15 years. Spanning five decades, the exhibition includes drawings and paintings from the 1960’s to the present; including examples of his commercial work from the 60’s and early paintings from the 70’s, alongside portraits and nudes from the 80’s onwards. Also included are still lives and line drawings, showcasing the range and versatility of one of Britain’s most talented artists.

The show will feature some of his best known works including “Passage of Arms” (1979) and “Changing” (1981) from the “Scaffolders Series” and his Thatcher cover for The Sunday Times (1980).

Passage of Arms, 1979.

Passage of Arms, 1979.

Born in 1933, Michael Leonard studied Commercial Design and Illustration at London’s Saint Martin’s School of Art from 1954 to 1957 and spent the next few years working as a freelance illustrator, producing artwork for books, magazines and advertising, before finding his voice as a painter and getting his first solo exhibition in 1974.

His early paintings, mainly portraits of friends and family, tended to be formal, sober and low key, a clear contrast to his commercial work. Over time, his work became more animated and colourful and in 1985 he was commissioned to paint the portrait of HRH Queen Elizabeth II which now hangs at the National Portrait Gallery.

The nude, and especially the male nude, has been a recurring theme in Leonard’s work, with his models often on the move or in a state of transition, dressing or undressing. Almost all his nude paintings are based on pencil drawings which are not only preparatory studies but works of art themselves, many of which are on display as part of the exhibition.

A list of works which are available for sale can be seen HERE

Coningsby Gallery 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ. Closed Sundays, open until 7pm Thursdays and Fridays.

Spring 2018 Exhibition @Coningsby Gallery, 5-17 Mar 18

I shall be taking my collection of paintings, prints, photography and works on paper to the Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ from 5-17 March 2018. The gallery will be open from 10am to 6pm (Mon - Wed) with late night opening until 7pm (Thurs - Friday), and 11am to 6pm (Sat).

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Event: Open House in Walthamstow - 10th September 2017 - 1-6pm.

I shall be opening my home gallery space to display my collection of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs from the 16th Century to the present day. The Open House will be open between 1pm and 6pm on 10th September 2017. There is no need to RSVP, just come along and have a look around. I hope to see you there.