Looking Forward to the Past: An Illustrious 275 Years

Gladwell & Patterson is proud to be London’s oldest art gallery. Founded in 1746, by the greatest print merchant of Georgian London, John Boydell, our business has always had the goal of dealing with the finest artists of their generation. We value quality and integrity very highly, and we understand the passion and creativity that comes hand-in-hand with being so talented.

Founded in the City of London, the gallery is proud to have remained an essential destination for anyone in search of fine paintings and sculpture. It has become apparent everyone remembers their first encounter with the gallery, and no wonder - over our centuries of history we have been committed to delivering wholesome and enjoyable experience to anyone who walks through our doors or visits our stands at Art Fairs across the globe.

The gallery’s history traverses many artistic movements, it contains incredible beauty, the wonder and power of artistic creation and its ability to bring such joy, contentment and unity to the World. The foundations of this fine art gallery are based on the pioneering and passionate work of many giants of the art world over the past 275 years. Their number include two Lord Mayors of London, a man who is credited with being the driving force behind the establishment of the National Gallery, the Head of the Fine Art Trade Guild and Masters of several of the Worshipful Companies in the City, amongst many other accolades.

The earliest custodians of our business, John Boydell in the eighteenth-century, and Henry Graves in the nineteenth-century, were the most successful print merchants in London at the time, specialising in publishing engravings from pictures by Joseph Mallord Wiliam Turner, John Constable, John Everett Millais, and other contemporary painters.

T. H. Gladwell was opened by Thomas Henry Gladwell, the son of a very talented carver and gilder, at 21 Gracechurch Street, in 1836. Initially, the gallery specialised in fine prints, books, and stationery, but with his father’s knowledge of carving and gilding, it wasn’t long before they had added frame making to their repertoire. By the time of Thomas Gladwells’s death in 1879, the business had firmly established itself as one of the leading art galleries and frame makers in London. Thomas’s three sons, Henry, Arthur and Alfred took over the business and renamed it Gladwell Brothers in 1880. Their extensive network of fine artists continued to expand and through their connections with European dealers and publishers such as the dealer Théodore Vibert, the publisher Alfred Cadart, and the dealer Adolphe Goupil, were vital in maintaining their position as one of the most ground-breaking, interesting, and knowledgeable art gallery in London.

Harry Gladwell, the eldest grandson of Thomas Henry Gladwell, would eventually take over the business at the start of the twentieth-century. Brought up as a hard-working, inquisitive, and religious lad, he yearned to join his father and uncles in the business. In 1875, aged eighteen, the intrepid Harry travelled to Paris to be apprenticed with the art dealer Adolphe Goupil in Paris. There, he became firm friends with another apprentice, Vincent van Gogh, who took the young Harry under his wing and showed him around the city. Vincent delighted in Harry’s idiosyncratic appearance, describing him as "thin as a stick with a pair of large red protruding ears", and his joie de vivre. Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo reveal the close relationship between the two young men.

Harry moved the gallery to its new home on the corner of 70 & 71 Cheapside, in the City of London; which soon became known as Gladwell’s Corner. With Harry’s experience gained through his various apprenticeships with his uncles and father and his spell at Goupils in Paris, he would go on to become the most successful art dealer of his time.

Two of Harry’s sons, Ernest and Algernon, joined their father at Gladwell & Company, learning the trade at the various branches of the company. In 1928, a year after Harry Gladwell died, the brothers went their separate ways. Algernon remained in the City and moved to a new gallery at the corner of Queen Victoria Street and Watling Street, where the gallery remained until 2012.

In 1968, Algernon retired and sold the business to Herbert Fuller, who had managed the gallery for him since 1932 and had been instrumental in steering the gallery through the hardships of the 1930s and then the blitz of London during the Second World War. Following the War, Algernon and Herbert regularly travelled to the Salons of Europe, meeting the best and most highly regarded artists with whom they started prosperous relationships. Herbert brought renowned French masters such as Georges Robin, Alexandre Jacob, Charles Perron, Edouard-Léon Cortès and Auguste Bouvard into the Gladwells fold. He introduced these artists to the British art market and subsequently around the world.

The same year that Herbert acquired Gadwell & Company, in 1968, his son Anthony Fuller joined him in the business. Father and son continued to take the gallery from strength to strength, cementing Gladwell & Company’s place as the most discreet and discerning Fine Art Gallery in London. It was the destination for any art collector wanting to build an honest and beautiful collection.

Upon Herbert’s untimely death in 1980, Anthony took over the company, and worked tirelessly to keep the old established gallery going. Anthony’s love of art soon found him his own group of clients, and there are precious few people who have met him in the gallery over the years who don’t comment on the infectious joy that paintings give him. Many people’s love of art has been founded on a few minutes in Anthony’s company with some paintings.

Anthony’s son Glenn joined the business in 1995, followed by his daughter, Cory, in 1998, following a successful and invaluable Masters degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2004, the Fuller family acquired the prestigious Mayfair gallery W H Patterson at 19 Albemarle Street. The gallery was opened in 1964 by Bill Patterson and became known as the premier gallery for contemporary artists painting in traditional styles, and artists from around the world wished to be represented by them.

In 2012, our two galleries in the City and in Mayfair were brought together under one roof in the equally distinguished environment of Knightsbridge. It is here, with the opening of Gladwell & Patterson, that two illustrious legacies combined in our new space at 5 Beauchamp Place, where we remain to this day.

In 2020, we opened the doors to Gladwells Rutland in the exclusive market town of Oakham in Rutland, offering a new and intimate space in which to show the works of our wonderful artists in the British countryside.

The Gladwell & Patterson ethos has been shaped by an informed yet fresh approach to what the separate parts have always done: presenting the finest works of art to those who appreciate them most, our perceptive, valued clients.

Gustave Loiseau French, (1865-1935)

One of the foremost Post-Impressionist painters, Gustave Loiseau was profoundly influenced by the great masterpieces of the Impressionists. A champion of painting the landscape en plein air , Loiseau embraced the use of bold colour as he explored and expanded the Impressionist style.

Loiseau rebelled against the traditional practices of painting and joined the famous artists’ colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany in 1890. There he became companions with Henry Moret, Maxime Maufra and Paul Gauguin and under their influence, Loiseau embraced the use of bold colour and sought to expand and seek new aspects of the Impressionist style. In his quest to create movement and light, Loiseau developed a distinct cross-hatching technique which resulted in the supple and ephemeral quality for which his work is known.

In 1895, Loiseau was introduced to the renowned Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, by Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, with whom he agreed an exclusive contract to sell his paintings. Loiseau’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel took place from March to April in 1898.

The hallmark of truly great painters has always their ability to develop and adapt their style throughout the course of a career, while still staying true to their artistic goals. In this respect, Gustave Loiseau is without peer. In his quest to explore complex and often overlooked atmospheric effects, he would continually adapt and innovate over the course of his life.

After his early years under Gaugin at Pont-Aven, in 1898 Loiseau began to synthesise the styles of Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro: combining the en plein air subjects of the former with the divisionist brushwork of the latter to study the rural landscapes of Northern France. His 1898 Les Peupliers and 1899 Le Chemin en Bord de Rivière brilliantly illustrate the novel technique which would win him the support of his great champion and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. The approach found in these works would culminate in the striking naturalism of his 1907-1908 period, captured in Peupliers sur les bords de l’Yonne

Despite the successes of 1898 to 1907, Loiseau’s desire to capture the complexity of atmosphere and light compelled him to adopt more fluid brushwork and complex colouration, a change evident in the bold purples and vigorous textures of his 1913 Rivière en Normandie Even in his mature career, Loiseau continued to innovate, mostly notably creating a novel, cross-hatched "en trellis" technique which he used to powerful effects in works like his 1929 Place de L’Étoile

Les Peupliers

Painted in 1898

Signed ‘G. Loiseau’ (lower left)

Oil on Canvas

81 x 65 cms / 32” x 25½”

Gustave Loiseau

French, (1865-1935)

Provenance

Durand-Ruel, Paris.

Private Collection, Switzerland.

Sale; De Quay-Lombrail, Paris, France, 7th December 1995, Lot 13.

Private Collection, New York.

Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, New York.

Sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 14th May 1997, lot 147; sold by the above.

Private Collection, New York.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired in May 2021.

Exhibitions

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, Exposition de tableaux de M. Gustave Loiseau, 26th March – 9th April 1898.

This work is sold with a certificate of authenticity and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Didier Imbert.

Gustave Loiseau

French, (1865-1935)

Les Peupliers depicts a vibrant landscape of the countryside surrounding the village of Nwesle-la-Vallée where Loiseau lived from 1890. Painted in 1898 at a pivotal point in the artists career, this magnificent landscape represents the coming together of Loiseau’s greatest influences, the Pont-Aven School and Loiseau’s Impressionists forbears, and reveals the young artists immeasurable talent and keen eye for observation through his ability to depict an atmospheric landscape through his application of paint.

The bold colours of Les Peupliers exemplifies Maufra and Moret’s influence on the young artist following his time in Pont-Aven earlier in the 1890s. Meanwhile, the handling of paint and Loiseau’s use of dappled directional brushstrokes reveal his debt to the Impressionists, particularly Alfred Sisley. For Sisley, as for most of the Impressionists, it was the ability to portray the effects of outdoor light that was of such importance and which meant that the smoothness of the finished work, much valued in traditional painting, would give way for a more textured surface. Sisley applied paint with thick impasto brushstrokes to create texture and contrast throughout his compositions. Sisley referred to this as the ‘animation of the surface’ and built-up layers of paint in response to the landscape in front of him. This free, broken brushstroke became one of the hallmarks of the Impressionists and was wholeheartedly embraced by Loiseau and his fellow Post-Impressionists. Following Sisley’s example, through interweaving colours, and added texture, Loiseau built up his characteristic atmospheric landscapes.

Encouraged and fostered by the most important figures of the art world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Loiseau painted this exquisite work at a pivotal point in his career, and it was subsequently included in his very first solo exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel, which took place from March to April in 1898. No exhibition catalogue was made for this exhibition, however Les Peupliers was first sold through Durand-Ruel in Paris and a review in La Revue Blanche by the art critic Thadée Natanson described landscapes depicting a range of scenes including ‘trembling haystacks and poplar trees’ which provides strong evidence that this painting was exhibited in Loiseau’s very first solo exhibition with Durand-Ruel.

The brushwork and vibrant colours of Les Peupliers reveal Loiseau’s profound skill in capturing the ambiance of nature. The vibrating colour harmonies of the field of golden wheat and the gestural brushstrokes of the gently swaying poplars enliven this sun drenched pastoral scene. Identifiable through a rich surface, composed using spontaneous brushwork as the pigment is layered upon the canvas, this masterful painting reveals the artists experimental nature and exemplifies Loiseau’s instinctive use of both Impressionist and PostImpressionist techniques in his quest to capture nature as he experienced it en plein air

Le Chemin en Bord de Rivière

Painted circa 1899-1900

Signed ‘G. Loiseau’ (lower right)

Oil on Canvas

50 x 61 cms / 19½” x 24”