Esdailes Fine Art Gallery

We began buying works to feature in our gallery in 2023 and many were needed to be cleaned and lightly restored with minimal intrusion.

Our gallery is named after an ancester, Sir James Esdails and his wife, Lady Mary Esdaile whose portrait hangs at our family home features as our logo.

She married James Esdaile aged 17 and lived in what was considered the finest house in Upminster. More can be read about the Esdailes here

We intend to have a "pop-up" venue for Hereford Art Week in September and feature contemporary artists work including that for the gallery owner, Angus Gilmour and some works from his late father, John Gilmour

Watercolours are a particularly difficult paint medium as it is very difficult to correct mistakes. Pigments used are transparent and in the creation of lovely works, there may be many washes to achieve the effect that an artist intends.

There is no answer to this, but we hope you will agree that artwork on the walls of a house are the foundation for a home. It might be something created by a child of your or something very precious, a print to remind you of a museum or some pavement art while on holiday. All art is beautiful, though not necessarily to everyone's taste. Seeing an artist create a picture in public view is always special and quite rare except in very public tourist destinations.

Perhaps there will be much more art available that is imaginary, created by AI. A couple of these are below. They are simply reference photos to AI created work and are really quite realistic - the problem seems that they were all done in Thailand and copied in their millions. There is also something rather false about them in that although the perspective is correct, they just don't seem real or sufficiently believeable.

Artists tend to have a distinctive style and even if their work is not signed, making an attribution that it is the work of Picasso, Matisse, Constable, Turner, Lawrence, de Breanski etc is very easy.

The future of art may be digital. No longer restricted by the traditional mediums of painting and sculpture, artists can now create entire worlds with a few clicks of a button.

In the past, creating a work of art was a laborious process, often taking weeks or even months to complete. But with digital art, the process is much faster and more flexible. Artists can create multiple versions of a work, experiment with different colors and textures, and make changes on the fly.

Digital art is also more interactive than traditional art. Viewers can explore it from all angles, and even interact with it directly. Some digital artworks even allow viewers to contribute their own creative input.

With the ever-growing popularity of digital art, it's clear that this is the future of the art world. So what does that mean for traditional artists? Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: original art is real and tangible.

Most of the works of art in oil are from the 19th Century are in ornate gilded frames and more information can be discovered for each artist. Watercolour paintings which we have for sale extend date from 19th to 21st Century

Oil paints are finely crushed pigments derived from earths, rocks, plants, animals, minerals or chemical reaction. These are combined with oil - usually linseed but could be walnut - using a glass muller. The more that the pigment is ground, the glossier the eventual paint and the smoother it becomes. Apprentice artists would start their career by mixing and grinding paint until the "Master" was content that it was suitable to be applied to the canvas or panel in the studio.

Modern oil paints tend to be ground using milling rolls, and, of course, for consistent colour, so there are more controls. Some artists like to mix their own paint as they tend to need small quantities. Waste can be kept to a minimum if scraped into a glass jar and turpentine added to maintain liquidity. These have many coloured paints and are often used for tinting a canvas or to sketch rough placements that might represent horizon lines or basic features in portraiture

Many artists never became famous, but their work, more or less provided a modest living. Commissioned artists tended to be portrait painters and more general artists confined their work to be landscapes and were ofted described as "potboilers". Up and down the country, these idyllic scenes hang in pubs and hotels and might even have been as payment food and lodging.