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Antique French Paintings

About this collection

French painting, from the court portrait of the old monarchy to the Barbizon landscape of the 19th century, is presented here as antique French oil paintings sourced in France and shipped from our gallery.

The 18th century gave French painting its portraits of powdered sitters, lace and silk set against dark grounds. The 19th turned to the countryside, to harvest fields, heaths, flocks and the edge of the forest, painted more and more in the open air. Many of the works here are signed, and many are still in their period frames, whether they hang in a dining room or a library. To see how French painters took their easels outdoors, read our guide to the Barbizon School.

The Virgin rising with arms open, carried by five draped angels above a dark plain and a walled town, in a moulded gilt frame (after Poussin, 1881)

French School, 19th century

Assumption of the Virgin, 1881
$3,500
Portrait of a young woman with a pearl necklace in a pale blue gauze dress, French School, circa 1840, in a carved gilt frame

French School, circa 1840

Woman with a Pearl Necklace
$5,600
19th century French oil portrait of a woman with blue flowers in her hair, gilt oval frame

French School, 19th century

Woman with Blue Flowers, 1857
$2,730Signed
Seventeenth century French allegory of autumn, a young woman with fruit beneath a tree in a harvest landscape, oil on panel in its original painted frame

French School, 17th century

Allegory of Autumn, 1600s
$3,920
The young Saint John the Baptist seated with the lamb and the reed cross, French School oil on canvas

French School, 18th century

Young Saint John, 1700s
$3,600
Allegory of Winter, French School 17th century, oil on panel in a moulded wood frame

French School, 17th century

Allegory of Winter, 1600s
$4,300

GalerieClub Fine Art

1,100+

paintings sold since 2017

Poppy Fields, late 1800sSold Poppy Fields, late 1800s Hagar and Ishmael, 1700sSold Hagar and Ishmael, 1700s Penitent Magdalene, 1600sSold Penitent Magdalene, 1600s

Our promise

  • Every painting photographed front and back
  • The frame you see is the frame that ships
  • Free tracked UPS Express Saver to the US

New paintings, by email

A note when new paintings come in. Nothing else.

Elsewhere in the gallery

Antique French oil paintings

Bought in France and painted there more than a century ago, these are authentic French oil paintings by listed artists and by anonymous hands, on canvas, panel and board, many of them still in the frames they were given.

  • Clothes date a sitter before any signature does. A French School oil painting of the 1700s shows the powdered wig and the lace cap of the old monarchy. The high stock of the years after the Revolution follows, then the pearl necklaces and silk caps of the 1800s, and the gentleman painted with his gun and his dog.

  • When painters in France took the easel outdoors in the 1800s, they found their subject in the fields and woods around them. A French landscape oil painting of that century may hold a stubble field with its haystacks, a heath in flower, a farmyard under a blossoming tree or a girl with her turkeys at the edge of the wood. Those painted in the manner of the forest school gather on the page of the Barbizon School. The sea is here too, from a fire on the shore at night to harbors and lagoons painted plein air in the early 1900s.

  • Beside portraits and landscapes, the collection holds religious scenes and allegories of the seasons, genre scenes, still lifes of flowers and fruit, views of Paris and animal pictures, from a pair of tigers to a huntsman with his hounds. Almost every work here is an original French oil painting, many of them signed, and none of them is a print.