Henry Wyatt, Portrait of Sir William Gell, oil on panel, sold by Miles Barton to the British Museum, London, in 2019, now on display in the permanent collection.
The show runs from November 29 to December 6 at Timothy Langston in west London. The pictures on offer, ranging in price from £3000-15,000, are all examples of what the dealer describes as “paintings found in obscurity and once more presented in their true light”.
For Barton, the focus of the event is the launch of his work Lost Portraits Rediscovered, which was published in the autumn by Triforium Press and is available from Foyles and Amazon.
It includes 35 examples of major sales to places such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and the Garrick Club in London.
One of the highlights is a portrait of Sir William Gell (1777-1836) by Henry Wyatt (1794-1840), which Barton came across unidentified and unattributed in 2017. Thinking he recognised Gell’s distinctive face from other images, Barton acquired it, and, after removing some distressed backing boards, discovered an old label.
Gell was a leading antiquarian in his day, making a number of archaeological finds including the site of Troy, and it was partly because of his work that there was a major vogue for ancient Greece in Georgian Britain.
The portrait was acquired by the British Museum in 2019.
