Ten artists to commission for unique gifts (or something to keep for yourself)
It’s universally agreed that art is essential for bringing an interior to life, and a custom commission can be a particularly lovely addition. Whether a portrait of a pet or a child, or a collage of a landscape that you love, it brings another layer of biography to a room. It could mark a moment - an anniversary, a birthday, a litter of puppies, a move – or simply be a recognition of happiness, and a means of recording it. Such works also make good presents, and if you’re thinking of a certain upcoming celebration, you might want to get started with arrangements. Here are ten artists we can recommend:
1/10Jan Teplan
Recording our pets is a practice that stretches back to the beginnings of time: dogs featured regularly in cave paintings. In the 18th century, artists including Thomas Gainsborough and Edwin Landseer began focussing on individual character – and the genre has only grown in popularity since. Jan Teplan originally trained as an architect and now combines art with working with luxury brands including Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Based in Paris, it is dogs, he reports, that are his most regularly requested subjects. He likes to have a few images - and will give a client instructions as to how to take appropriate snaps – and uses oils and acrylics to find the best likeness he can. He also paints people, and can do a double portrait of you and your dog. Prices start at £280 for a pencil drawing, and £350 for a painting.
2/10Christopher Gee
Christopher Gee’s dog and cat portraits – approached in a human-esque, head-and-shoulders manner – have a decidedly compelling quality. He describes himself as inspired by folk art and naïve painting as well as Northern Renaissance imagery, uses acrylic-on-paper, and works start at £250. He too also paints people, as well as houses, landscapes – and birds, which are another delight.
3/10SJ Axelby
Speaking of houses: interior portraiture first appeared in Europe at the end of the 17th century. Then, it’s purpose was to record the contents of a gallery room, library, or Wunderkammer. Charm ensured its endurance – it can be fun to have picture of a room in the room its picturing. But it is also a lovely way to remember your childhood home, a house you loved but had to leave, or any scheme that you particularly admire. SJ Axelby’s prices start at £750 for her appealing pen and watercolour renditions that capture print, pattern and all the other details included in the photograph she works from. She’s got two books to her name, and she’s the founder of the Room Portrait Club (which has just turned 200 weeks old) – which can be a good source for finding other artists who specialise in interiors.
4/10Emma Black
For a different approach at eternalising an interior, Emma Black’s Matisse-inspired oil paintings are less of a facsimile reproduction than a celebration of “the higgeldy piggeldy look of imperfect life”, served with a dollop of fantasy. She will work with an image of an actual room – or an idea of a room - and can bring in pets, lining up chickens and pigs in a kitchen as well as dogs and cats, or, alternatively, the animals you’d like to live with. One recent commission called for penguins – and in her world, an elephant can absolutely co-exist with a Jack Russell, in a drawing room. Initials can also be worked into the design, along with dates, musical instruments, and more. Prices begin at £500, and that includes the frame.
Instagram/@worksbywilf5/10Wilf Water
There’s also, of course, the outside of a building – which might be an architectural wonder, or just a simple terrace that is, nonetheless, a beloved home. Wilf Water is still at university, but his cross-hatch drawings, which are £850 for A3 size, drew the attention of Cath Kidston, who commissioned him to record the façade of her house. Under Wilf’s hand, it appears luminous through a web of branches.
6/10Jo-Anne Burgess
Then there’s Jo-Anne Burgess, aka Green Magpie, who works with collage. Her prices start at £300, and she uses salvaged paper to stitch together the lively details of a Victorian terrace complete with window boxes, or a flint cottage with washing fluttering on the breeze and children playing nearby. She’s recently done two commissions for the writer Clover Stroud, who, last year, moved from Wiltshire to Washington DC. One is of their house in Oxfordshire, and another places the entire family, including ponies, dogs, and some of her eldest son’s ‘raving mates’, underneath the White Horse of Uffington.
7/10Sarah Blomfield
A democratising wave rippled through portraiture in the second half of the 18th century – and, since, has only furthered its reach. Sarah Blomfield’s beautifully rendered pencil drawings begin at £500, and a head and shoulders in oil at £900. She studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea, which is one of the oldest independent art colleges in Britain and one of the few to focus on portraiture and figurative painting. She prefers to work from photographs than from life (which can be easier for children) and she also does dogs, cats, horses, houses - for which she uses watercolour – and rather lovely lampshades.
8/10Carly Wiggins
For more on pets, Carly Wiggins trained in animation and was formerly Senior Print Designer at Stella McCartney. She likes a few photographs so that she can get a distinct idea of personality, whether that’s a dog, cat, iguana, guinea-pig, or any other animal that you might have in mind. Her attractive line drawings start at £250, and she also works in watercolour.
9/10Lucy Corbett
Lucy Corbett trained at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, which teaches the same French Academy method of portraiture as John Singer Sargent employed. Now based in the Brecon Beacons, she works both from life and from photographs – “sometimes it has to be from photographs because of logistics” – and her alluring charcoal drawings start at £950. If you can stretch the budget, know that she can also capture a whole family in oil, with dogs, in an interior. And her oeuvre extends to landscapes and still-lifes – which could be a vignette of a shelf in your house.
10/10Davina Bosanquet
Davina Bosanquet, too, has a background in traditional portraiture – which she can combine with a more contemporary style that marries colourful abstraction with “capturing a moment in time.” Working from photographs, she uses a wide range of different materials, and her prices start at £400. She also paints animals – and has twice won her category at the Wildlife Artist of the Year Awards.
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