Classic Art London 2026

Classic Art London returns for its second year from Monday 22 June to Friday 3 July, celebrating pre contemporary art at leading dealers across St. James’s, Mayfair and environs. Gallery exhibitions encompass all media and genres spanning antiquity to modernity. An informative and enjoyable programme of events takes place concurrently, including a dedicated Talks Thursday on 25 June, supported by Lockton, at The Society of Antiquaries, with many talks relating to the selling exhibitions. Speakers and panellists include art historians, academics, museum curators and internationally renowned experts. 

Highlights include:

Elizabeth I: Queen & Court at Philip Mould & Company, featuring truly outstanding Tudor works. These include the earliest surviving life-sized, full-length portraits painted during Queen Elizabeth I's lifetime, alongside some of the key figures of her reign and close circle of courtiers and confidantes. A number of works are on loan especially.

Paul Mitchell Ltd, purveyors and makers of the finest antique and replica frames, will open their doors during the event for special tours of their studio and talks on the importance of the correct frame.They reveal the improvements their frames have made to many museum-owned artworks.

The 250th anniversary of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence has prompted an important exhibition by Ben Elwes Fine Art looking at the cross-fertilization of art and artists during those founding years. One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution will include works by Benjamin West (1738-1820), John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and a fine landscape by John Taylor (1735-1806).

A panel discussion on the same subject is part of Talks Thursday on 25 June, with an impressive line up of speakers on the subject: Paul Staiti, Professor at Mount Holyoke College and author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters' Eyes; Adam Chen of Harvard University and co-curator of Life and Liberty: The Revolution in American Art which opens at Tate Britain in June, and Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of The King's Pictures at the Royal Collection Trust.

At Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, there is a special exhibition of 18th and 19th century British watercolours and drawings of landscapes and nature, whilst Stephen Ongpin Fine Art will show architectural, decorative, ornamental and design drawings dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

Further Information: : Classic Art London