Darnley Fine Art

Darnley Fine Art is a two-floor gallery on Cecil Court, the seventeenth-century passageway of Victorian shopfronts between Leicester Square and Covent Garden, steps from the National Gallery. Established in 2007 by Adrian Pett, it specialises in fine paintings and works on paper from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and holds a carefully curated collection of over 920 works.

The gallery is a leading specialist in nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings of the Middle East and the principal dealer in lithographs and paintings by David Roberts RA, the Scottish artist who travelled the region in the 1830s and 1840s. Beyond selling, Darnley advises private collectors and institutions on acquisition, framing, ongoing care and insurance, with confidentiality assured, which gives it a more scholarly character than many dealers on the court.

Orientalist and Old Master paintings in London

The wider stock spans Old Masters, Victorian paintings, Modern British art, Post-Impressionist works, portraits and sculpture, with categories for early works, international art and new acquisitions. The Orientalist paintings and the David Roberts holdings remain the clearest specialism, and recent stock has ranged from a seventeenth-century portrait by Nicolas Mignard to a Harold Williamson figure study.

What to expect on a visit

Darnley opens Monday to Saturday from 10.30am to 5.30pm, excluding bank holidays, and is closed on Sunday. Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Charing Cross stations are all within a short walk, as are the National Portrait Gallery and Somerset House. It is one of the anchor art galleries in Covent Garden, and Emanuel von Baeyer further along the court covers prints and drawings from the same centuries.