Rafael Valls Gallery has long specialised throughout its history in Animal and Bird paintings and this exhibition is a further example of this. We have had a number of these exhibitions over the years but this promises to be one of the most interesting with an early study of animals and insects by Jan Brueghel the younger as well as a beautiful Rubensian study of a Spaniel by Simon de Vos. The later paintings include a charming painting of a dog and her puppies by Henriette Ronner-Knip, known mostly for her paintings of cats. Amongst the bird paintings is an impressive picture of a peacock and chickens by the rare English painter Charles Collins and a masterpiece by an 18th Century Spanish painter, Francisco Michans Gargori of the Infante Francisco de Paula de Bourbon’s Court Aviary Keeper. The impressive and unusual Cock fight painting by Jacques Barraband will also be a centrepiece of the exhibition.

Always popular with collectors as paintings away from the norm, the exhibition hopes to show a very wide ranging and differing collection of animals and birds. It will hopefully interest any keen lover of fauna and old master paintings as well as delight the casual observer. The strength of the exhibition lies in its depth of subject matter and spanning of several centuries which will also show how this genre of painting developed over the years. From the slightly more generic forms in the earlier paintings, to the much more personal and portrait like treatment of animals and birds in the later paintings.

The exhibition runs from the 8th June until the 18th July and will be our feature exhibition during London Art Week.