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Small Antique Paintings

About this collection

A small antique painting is not a small work. The cabinet picture was the format in which a painter worked closest to the eye, on panel, on copper or on a fine canvas, and it was valued accordingly in its own time.

These small paintings run from the 17th century to the first years of the 20th and cross every subject, from Old Master panels and court portraits to landscapes, dog portraits and devotional scenes. Many are signed. Many keep their period frames, and several hang well together on a single wall.

Habsburg portrait of a lady with jeweled tiara and red shawl, early 19th century oil in gilt frame

Austrian School, early 19th century

Lady with a Jeweled Tiara, 1800s
$3,400
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, after Anthony van Dyck, seated in a ruff and black cloak, 19th century oil on panel

European School, 19th century

Earl of Arundel, after van Dyck
$2,800
Portrait of a Habsburg officer in white Austrian uniform with orders, oil in gilt frame

Austrian School, early 19th century

Habsburg Officer, 1800s
$2,900
Signed and dated 1882 portrait of a puppy by Charles Chaplin, oil on bare mahogany panel in a carved gilt frame

Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825-1891)

Portrait of a Puppy, 1882
$3,800Signed

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

Small antique paintings for sale at GalerieClub

Size never measured importance. The collectors of the 17th century kept their best pictures close, and painters answered with small antique oil paintings finished to be studied at arm's length. This collection carries that tradition from the Baroque to the early 20th century, with many small French works and small portraits gathered in their own collection of small antique portrait paintings.

  • A cabinet was a room, not a piece of furniture. Wealthy collectors of the 17th century gave the name to the small private chamber where they kept their finest paintings, and an antique cabinet picture is a work sized for that room. The smoothest supports suited it best. Oak panel takes a thin paint layer without the grain of canvas, and a painting on copper holds detail almost like enamel. Small religious scenes and Flemish and Dutch panels belong to this tradition, and the joins and battens on the back of a panel often help to date it.

  • A landscape painter outdoors needed something he could carry. In the 19th century many painters worked on small panels and canvases directly in front of the motif, and a small antique landscape painting of heath, harvest field or coast often keeps the speed and freshness of that first session. Some were finished later in the studio. Others were left as the painter brought them home, signed on the spot.

  • Dogs sat for portraits too. Owners of the 18th and 19th centuries commissioned likenesses of a favourite spaniel or a new puppy at the same intimate scale as a family portrait, and a small antique dog oil painting was usually made for the house, not for exhibition. The breed, the collar and the cushion often say more about the household than about the dog.

  • On a small work every stroke shows. A signature in a lower corner, sometimes with a date, places the painting in its painter's career, and unsigned works are described by school and period, as our guide to reading an attribution explains. A wide gilt frame does real work on a small painting. It draws the eye inward and gives a modest canvas the presence of a much larger one.

    Shipping is free to the USA and Canada, packed and tracked from France. New to buying old paintings? Start with our guide to How to Collect Antique Paintings.