Classical & Old Master Style Portrait Paintings

This is the style people reach for when a portrait has a job to do beyond likeness: hanging in a boardroom, marking a retirement, standing in for someone who is gone.

How a classical portrait is built

Almost the whole canvas sits in the dark half of the scale. A warm brown or deep green ground, a single light source off to one side, and the lit planes of the face — the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the cheekbone — carrying nearly all the brightness in the picture. Clothing goes dark; hands, if they appear at all, catch a little light and no more.

Painted badly this is just a murky picture. Painted properly, the darks stay transparent and full of colour rather than going to black, which is why oil and a layered approach suit it.

Why we show master copies

Anyone can claim to paint in the classical manner. The test is whether the painters can hold a drawing and build colour in layers, and the fairest way to show that is to copy a painting anyone can look up. Our studio work page has copies after Rubens, Holbein, Antonello and others, alongside academic drawings from plaster casts.

Those are not commissions and we do not sell copies of them. They are there so you can judge the level before you order.

What to send

A clear photograph of the face. The setting does not matter — the background is replaced with a painted ground either way, and the light is rebuilt. If you have a particular portrait in mind as a reference for the manner, send that too.