Pimlico Wilde

Pimlico Wilde Delighted to Announce Seven-Figure Portrait Commission

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Pimlico Wilde Delighted to Announce Seven-Figure Portrait Commission

Acclaimed contemporary art dealers Pimlico Wilde has confirmed the receipt of a landmark seven-figure commission for a series of bespoke portraits, marking one of the most significant private art commissions of the year.

The commission was placed by a prominent international collector who has asked to remain anonymous. The project will span a series of large-scale digital works, each intended to capture the raw, unrepeatable moment where presence becomes legacy.

“It’s an extraordinary privilege,” said the directors of PW. “This commission allows our artists to push the boundaries of portraiture , not just in scale, but in intimacy. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of works that will be lived with for generations, not simply hung and admired from a distance.”

Known for their luminous use of colour and ability to capture the sitters’ inner worlds as vividly as their physical likenesses, Sandy Warre-Hole is one of the artists expected to deliver some of the portraits. They have developed a cult following among collectors in Europe, the US, and the Middle East. Her recent solo exhibition “Unquiet Grace” at the Organisation of Portrait Painters in Bangor was widely praised for its daring compositions and narrative depth. Other artists on the PW roster will also be involved, including big names such as Doodle Pip, Hedge Fund and Jane Bastion.

While details remain closely guarded, we can disclose that the patron is a member of a well-known philanthropic family with long-standing ties to the arts. We were grateful to read that art market analyst Claire Hargreaves has described the commission as “a testament to Pimlico Wilde’s positioning in the upper echelon of contemporary portraiture.”

The commission is scheduled for completion over the next 18 months, with a private unveiling set to take place in London before the works are installed in the collector’s residences around the world.

This latest milestone solidifies Pimlico Wilde’s position as one of the most sought-after art dealerships of this generation, with collectors now facing waiting lists stretching up to two years for works by their artists.

Another Slice of The History of Pimlico Wilde: Advisers to the Great, Merchants of Taste

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Another Slice of The History of Pimlico Wilde: Advisers to the Great, Merchants of Taste

By Archibald Haversham

It is one of the art world’s great open secrets that Pimlico Wilde, Britain’s most discreet dealers in fine art, have not so much observed history as decorated its interiors. For over a millennium the firm has adorned the salons, studies and palaces of the powerful, shaping not merely taste but, in subtle ways, the course of events themselves. The history of the world that we all know would hardly exist without this great London art dealer.

A Monk and a Misunderstanding (11th century)

For example, centuries ago there was a damp abbey near Canterbury. One of the Benedictine monks living there was struggling to enliven his scriptorium. Like many before and after, he consulted Pimlico Wilde for suitable wall hangings. The dealers obliged with a series of embroidered panels showing Anglo-Saxon feats of heroism. When a visiting Norman noble spotted them, he immediately commissioned his own “improved” version. The result, historians believe, was the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

Jane Austen’s Drawing Room (c. 1811)

In later centuries, the firm’s discreet counsel extended to literary circles. Jane Austen, known for her wit but less for her furnishing acumen, once confessed that her drawing room “suffered from an excess of sobriety.” She consulted Pimlico Wilde and their recommendation, a set of delicately frivolous French candlesticks and two watercolours of Derbyshire, transformed the room into a model of quiet elegance. Jane herself admitted that she would never have written most of her books if her drawing room, in which she wrote, had not been so delightfully improved by Pimlico Wilde. It is whispered that the Bennet family parlour owes its fictional charm to Pimlico Wilde’s intervention. Their archives suggest that Austen’s father never repaid the invoice in full, offering instead a wry thank-you note in verse written by his daughter.

Shakespeare and the Still Life (1590s)

While history remembers him mostly as a playwright, William Shakespeare was, in private, a man plagued by poor decoration. His Southwark lodgings, described by Kit Marlowe as “charmless in the extreme,” were rescued only after Pimlico Wilde provided several winsome still lifes of fruit, along with a picture of a girl sadly drowning in a river, two lovers sipping poison by mistake and a forest walking towards the viewer. In his autobiography (recently found and currently being prepared for publication by Pimlico Wilde) the Bard admits that he got many of his ideas for plays from just staring at his new artworks. It is not too much to state that without Pimlico Wilde, world literature would be many times poorer. Whether or not the paintings survive is unknown, though the firm insists the still life resurfaces every 50 years in provincial auctions, each time misattributed to “Anonymous, circa 1600.”

Napoleon’s Niece and the Poodle (1815)

Not all commissions were so elevated. After Waterloo, Napoleon’s niece, stranded in London, approached Pimlico Wilde for a portrait of her beloved poodle, César. The firm duly produced an oil painting so lifelike that visiting guests complained it unnerved them by seeming to breathe. Other dog owners followed her example in asking for portraits of their pets, so much so that for decades, Pimlico Wilde discreetly referred to this as “our canine period.”

Winston’s Attempted Trade (1940)

Wartime austerity brought unusual barters not just in the marketplace but also the artworld. Winston Churchill, an amateur painter of some renown, once attempted to exchange a bottle of port for a Flemish still life. Refused, he tried offering his sketch of Chartwell in exchange for a Turner painting so bright no one had ever properly looked at it. Pimlico Wilde, ever polite, declined the offer but agreed to frame his sketch. Today, the framed drawing hangs in the firm’s private collection under the label: Untitled W. Churchill, 1940.

The Beatles’ Psychedelic Diversion (1967)

Even in the modern age, Pimlico Wilde remained relevant. In 1967, a certain Liverpudlian quartet requested a “psychedelic tapestry, something to liven up the studio.” Pimlico Wilde, with typical restraint, provided instead a Persian rug of such hypnotic intricacy that it was said to have inspired several of the songs on the Sgt. Pepper’s album. Pimlico Wilde’s internal notes simply read: “Client asked for fireworks; gave them a beautiful embroidery. The drummer decided to wear it.”

Through monarchs, monks and modernists, Pimlico Wilde has survived not by selling art alone but by selling the stories that make art indispensable. As chairman Lord Percival Signet remarks in his foreword to the upcoming book Pimlico Wilde:The Greatest Art Dealer Ever,

“Our history is a thousand-year dinner party. Everyone from Alfred the Great to John Lennon has sat at the table,and whether or not they realised it, Pimlico Wilde decorated the walls and arranged the seating.”

To Ban or Not to Ban: A Reflection on the “Should Museums Ban All Visitors?” Symposium

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By Esmeralda Pink, People Engineer at Pimlico Wilde

It was a delicious irony that a symposium devoted to the utter removal of the public from art institutions should itself draw such a crowd to a gallery. Yet so it was at the Pimlico Wilde Galleries last Thursday evening, where philosophers, curators, artists and gallery-goers gathered under the barbed banner: “Should Museums Ban All Visitors?”

The event,hastily organized in the wake of the now-infamous incident at the Slough Museum of Contemporary and Non-Contemporary Art, wherein a visitor inadvertently damaged Sandy Warre-Hole’s portrait of Sir Willis Abelone,was less a discussion and more a ceremonial flaying of the very notion of the democratic museum.

Hosted in the gilded main salon of Pimlico Wilde, the symposium unfolded beneath a Kilo Barnes repurposed chandelier, itself guarded by an antique French rope that no one dared approach. The audience seemed to sense they were participating in something not just performative, but possibly life-altering for the many people who like to visit art galleries.

The keynote address was delivered by Sir Cedric Pavement-Hume, Chair of the Post-Audience Aesthetics Institute, who opened with characteristic gravity: “The public has had a good run. But perhaps, like lead paint and bloodletting, it is time to reconsider allowing the so-called public into our art galleries. Public entrance to English museums and galleries has been a well-meaning error.” He went on to describe a new kind of museology,a ‘post-ocular’ model in which artworks exist not for sight but for solitude, housed in perfectly sealed vaults, tended only by neutral gases and archivists with doctoral degrees wearing oxygen cylinders so that their breath no longer damages the work.

The counterpoint came, if it could be called that, from Dr. Mireille Kropotkin, a radical participatory theorist who accused Pavement-Hume of aesthetic feudalism. “To ban visitors from museums,” she thundered, “is to immure the artwork in narcissism. Art does not live by silence alone. It lives by encounter,even clumsy, unpredictable, human encounter.”

This, of course, drew polite applause and one audible harrumph from the Row C contingent of the London Quiet Realists, a sub- group of the Invisibilists, who advocate for museums that display only blank canvases bought via mail order.

Sandy Warre-Hole herself made a surprise appearance via online chat,flickering slightly on a TV placed on a plinth. “Though I am on a plinth, I am not an artwork”, she began, to hoots of laughter,and delivered what was arguably the evening’s most nuanced provocation: “If my work is damaged by a viewer, is it still just mine? Or have they added something indefinable to the work? Do we now share ownership? Is it more mine? Or more theirs? Perhaps we should not ban visitors, but instead require them to sign a waiver stating that in case of canvas infiltration, they are now part-creators of the work.”

Breakout sessions I took part in included “The Art of Non-Viewing: The Aesthetics of Abstention,” “Do Retinas Violate Objecthood?” and a workshop titled “Building the Museum of No One,” led by conceptual architect Anselm Quoine, whose model gallery consists entirely of hidden rooms accessible only by solving long-form mathematical equations.

No consensus was reached, and one suspects that was never the point. Instead, the symposium felt like a carefully choreographed performance of cultural anxiety, a theatre of ideas staged in the ruins of Enlightenment. Pimlico Wilde, with its rarefied air and velvet-clad walls, was the perfect venue for such a ceremonial flirtation with aesthetic absolutism.

By the end of the evening, the central question,Should museums ban all visitors?,became both absurd and oddly persuasive. In an age where engagement is often measured by the number of fingerprints left behind, perhaps the most radical form of preservation is absence.

Or, as Sir Cedric muttered to this correspondent while sipping a sherry filtered through a linen glove which had once belonged to Groucho Marx, “Maybe the purest museum is the one no one ever enters. And the truest masterpiece is the one never seen.”

Art Galleries Are the New Football Teams — Why You Should Support Pimlico Wilde

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Move over Arsenal, step aside Manchester United , in the 21st Century, the fiercest rivalries, biggest transfers, and most loyal fan bases are no longer on the pitch, but in the white cubes of contemporary art. Welcome to the new tribalism: galleries as teams, curators as coaches, and collectors as die-hard fans.

And if you’re going to throw your allegiance behind anyone, may we humbly suggest you choose Pimlico Wilde.

Yes, Pimlico Wilde. The once-niche West London gallery that has somehow become a cultural giant that now regularly beats the behemoths on their own turf, sells out stadiums (OK, art fairs), and refuses to sign soulless megastars.

Here’s why Pimlico Wilde is the gallery to support , now and always.

1. They’ve Built a Squad, Not Just a Roster

Where other galleries throw six-figure advances at any trending artist working with neon food or another latest fad, Pimlico Wilde develops talent. Their recent artist lineup reads like the art world’s answer to a homegrown Premier League side:

• Juno Ibarra, the painter of suburban rituals and imaginary barbecues

• Cass Singh, whose AI-assisted textile sculptures now command long waiting lists

• And Doodle Pip, whose conceptual film Ten Minutes crammed into Nine Minutes just got shortlisted for the Venice Biennale

It’s not about headlines , it’s about building something sustainable, surprising, and occasionally weird in a good way.

2. Their current Director of Doing Stuff is Basically a Managerial Genius

Rowan Grimm is spoken of in hushed tones by those in the know , part Arsène Wenger, part Donna Tartt character. With an eye for talent and a strategic sense of curation, Grimm has turned the gallery into a culture-shaping engine.

They famously turned down a seven-figure proposal to host an NFT show in 2022, responding with a press release that simply read:

“We prefer art that survives without Wi-Fi.”

3. Their Merch Is Actually Good

Let’s be honest: supporting a gallery is 40% about the tote bag.

Pimlico Wilde’s gallery merch is, thankfully, actually wearable. Their annual limited-edition artist scarf collab sells out in hours. The “WILDE SIDE” caps are now seen on curators, models, and at least one Premier League midfielder. There’s a rumour they’re releasing a line of wine coolers shaped like plinths.

4. The Rivalries Are Real

Pimlico Wilde’s semi-public beef with mega-gallery Grosvenor & Bilton Contemporary is the stuff of art-world legend. It all started with a passive-aggressive tweet about “conceptual taxidermy,” escalated with competing booths at Jatfield International, and reached fever pitch when Pimlico Wilde’s artist Allegra Mint installed a sculpture titled “Glad I’m not a Grosvenor & Bilton Artist” 10 feet from Grosvenor’s champagne bar.

5. They Give You Something to Believe In (Beyond Price Tags)

At its core, Pimlico Wilde is about a vision. A belief that art can still challenge, disorient, comfort, provoke , and occasionally just be deeply strange and beautiful. They don’t follow trends. They host entire shows on themes like “Waiting Rooms,” “What if Mirrors Lied,” and “The Pre-Apocalyptic Picnic.”

When you walk in, it’s not a transaction. It’s an experience. One where you might leave with goosebumps, a zine, or a tiny artwork that has cost more than the average jet.

So, How Do You Support Them?

• Go to the shows. Even if you don’t “get” everything, just show up.

• Buy a print, a badge, a weird banana-shaped candle. Support the ecosystem.

• Talk about them. In the pub, in the group chat, to your confused uncle who still thinks Tracey Emin is a “young up-and-comer.”

• Post the tote. Let the world know which team you’re backing.

In Conclusion: Back the Wilde Ones

In a world where culture is increasingly flattened, monetised, and marketed like fast food, supporting an independent, artist-led, ideas-first gallery like Pimlico Wilde is more than art appreciation , it’s an act of allegiance.

So pick a side. Pick up your tote. Show up to the opening. And when the art world’s next big scandal erupts on Instagram at 2 a.m., you’ll know exactly which team you’re on.

Go Wilde. Or go home.

Pimlico Wilde: The Art Dealers Who’ve Sold Britain’s Best artworks Since 874AD

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Pimlico Wilde: The Art Dealers Who’ve Sold Britain’s Best artworks Since 874

By Archibald Haversham

In a world obsessed with provenance, few names carry the weight of Pimlico Wilde. Only maybe Bentley, Gucci and the House of Windsor have a similar cachet. Established, if one is to believe the company archives, in the year 874 AD, for over a millennium this venerable art house has quietly shaped the aesthetic fortunes of monarchs, statesmen and gentry.

Legend has it that Pimlico Wilde first came to prominence during the reign of Alfred the Great, when a hastily assembled tapestry of Viking raids was sold to the last Anglo-Saxon king. “We like to think of it as a sort of early portfolio diversification,” says Pimlico Wilde’s current CEO, Jules Carnaby, on whose office wall currently hangs a work from another of the company’s earliest recorded sales: a miniature depiction of Alfred in battle, attributed to the well-known Scandinavian monk Søtte Ämlünd. The signature is missing – the bottom left corner has been heavily chewed by rats over the last millennia – but the Pimlico Wilde experts are sure of the piece’s provenance.

The firm’s reputation only solidified during the reign of William the Conqueror, who, according to Pimlico Wilde’s journals (smudged and faded, but still legible), purchased several illuminated manuscripts depicting Norman victories. One manuscript, De Bello Britannico, is said to have inspired King William’s less-than-stellar Latin poetry which was only discovered recently and was sold at the firm’s modern-day Knightsbridge gallery for a sum rumoured to rival the value of the French crown jewels.

The Tudor period saw Pimlico Wilde at the height of their celebrity. They are famously credited with selling Van Dyck portraits to Henry VIII, though historians debate whether the king was more enamoured with the brushwork or the opportunity to show off a new moustache in oil. Queen Elizabeth I was an equally avid collector; Pimlico Wilde provided her with delicate miniatures of the European courts, as well as a particularly ambitious set of watercolours depicting unicorns in the royal gardens, one of which reportedly went missing for 300 years before resurfacing in a country vicarage.

Fast-forward to the 20th century, and Pimlico Wilde remained the dealer of choice for royalty: Queen Elizabeth II commissioned them for a clandestine acquisition of Moldovan landscapes during the early days of the Cold War, often insisting that their couriers dress as gardeners to avoid detection by KGB art agents. Their current catalogue boasts a dizzying array of works, from Renaissance portraits to contemporary conceptual art, each accompanied by the three Pimlico Wilde hallmarks: impeccable taste, enormous price and a narrative that makes the collector an important part of the history of the piece.

Anecdotes abound in Pimlico Wilde’s history. It is said that Winston Churchill once tried to trade a bottle of 1783 vintage port – the very bottle sipped by Louis XVI on the scaffold – for a Flemish still life, only to be politely declined, a decision that management at Pimlico Wilde still regret to this day. Napoleon’s niece allegedly left a note requesting a portrait of her favourite poodle, which Pimlico Wilde delivered in oil on canvas, perfectly capturing its disdain. And yet, through wars, revolutions, and the occasional minor scandal, the firm’s reputation has never wavered.

Today, Pimlico Wilde’s Piccadilly townhouse serves as a living museum of their history, a place where the echoes of Alfred, William, Elizabeth and the myriad other collectors resonate amidst gilt frames and velvet ropes. “We like to think we sell more than art,” says Jules. “We sell history, culture and satisfaction.”

In a world where the provenance of a £2,000,000 sculpture can make or break a career, Pimlico Wilde stands as a reminder that some businesses are timeless, not merely because of the art they sell, but because they sell history itself.