Jun 29, 2026

Bagshawe Fine Art unearth important self-portrait by John Hoppner

Early in 2025, while looking through a mixed offering of pictures in an overseas sale, the partners at Bagshawe Fine Art were struck by a small, rather romantic-looking profile portrait of a young man. Catalogued as ‘19th Century European School’, we were convinced it was English and dateable to the years around 1800. We duly bought the painting and brought it back to England. Being able to study it at first hand, our hunches as to nationality and date were confirmed, and we sensed that we were dealing with one of the very good portrait hands of that period. Eventually we became quietly convinced that the brush-work and colouring were closer to the work of John Hoppner (1758–1810) than to any of the other contenders, and that this was in fact a self-portrait.

Enlisting the help of Sotheby’s, we were able to garner the favourable opinion of John Wilson, for many years the specialist on the work of John Hoppner. In order to bring the picture to the attention of the widest possible audience, we instructed Sotheby’s to sell it for us in December 2025, where it duly sold very satisfactorily to a private collector in the UK. We are proud to have brought this important addition to the oeuvre of John Hoppner to light.