This picture from a lithograph by A. Pernet is a detailed panorama of activity on Southsea seafront in 1865.

Apart from the paddle steamers taking tourists on pleasure trips, the army offficers riding on the common and the bathing machines protecting the modesty of those taking the waters, the scene is almost unchanged from what one sees today. The major exception would be that the pier on the left with its paddle steamer is today the landing place for hovercraft to the Isle of Wight.

This large print (1000 x 490 mm) is now available for £30 on our webshop.

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The Embarkation at Dover
By an unknown artist, c.1545
The Royal Collection 2007, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

This fabulous painting of the warship Mary Rose and some of the most important warships in Henry VIII’s early navy is one of the stars of this summer’s Young Henry VIII exhibition at Hampton Court Palace near London, the Tudor King’s most famous residence.

A series of important Tudor paintings are brought together in the exhibition alongside audiovisual displays, interactive touch screens and historic quotes to tell the story of dashing Prince Henry who founded what became the Royal Navy. Almost the first act of his reign was to order the building of the Mary Rose, a revolutionary warship – the first with gunports in her side to allow broadsides to be fired.

This picture, The Embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover, shows the Mary Rose and her sister warship the Great Harry in 1520 as Henry VIII set sail for a meeting with King Francis I of France – they had signed a peace treaty in 1518 – accompanied by 6,000 members of the English court.

We can’t sell you the Queen’s picture of The Embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover from Hampton Court, but Artists Harbour has a magnificent print of it measuring 1240 x 658 mm. It is printed on glorious hand-made paper with specially made inks using engraved plates made c.1780 by artist Samuel Grimm and engraver James Basire. The result has then been hand-coloured. This truly magnificent and unique print is on sale for £750.

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We have just published 31 new greetings cards with illustrations by Southsea-based artist-designer-illustrator Jon Everitt.

Jon is one of those people who can be described as “having a beady mind”… he can find the bizarre in the mundane, the amusing in the boring routine.

Jon, 49, was born in Windsor. “I spent virtually my entire childhood drawing things when I should have been doing other things,” he says. It seemed somehow inevitable that he should become an artist, so he enrolled at Reigate School of Art and Design, “where I spent my time doing other things when I should have been drawing things”.

Then he fell into a career as a freelance illustrator (he hates the word ‘cartoonist’) and designer. Today, Jon is still a freelance (”some people never grow up”) and has illustrated and designed for many famous brand names.

He works in a huge variety of media, both traditional and hi-tech.

Jon tends to worry his partner by relating the dreadful puns that come to him in his sleep.

Now, we hope our new range of cards will give him another outlet to relieve this situation.

We also sell some of his originals which can be seen in the gallery and online.

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We are pleased to announce that we are now publishing greeting cards from some of Robin Eckardt’s paintings. If you have been to the gallery, you may have seen her impressive pictures of yachts sailing as she exhibited with us twice. Two of her paintings (Yellow Sails and Over Head Yacht) are currently on display and keep on amazing our customers with their texture, incredible seas and impression of speed. You can buy these two and other originals from Robin on our webshop or greetings cards from her scenes of London (Picadilly Circus, Big Ben, Saint Paul), New-York and Venice. See all her artworks.

Robin Eckardt was born on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico where she spent the first ten years of her life. She is a fine art printer and captures the most effective points whilst painting her portraits of famous people. Since a very young age she has always had a strong passion for art and has become more serious for the subject throughout her years of study.

She has experienced with all types of media and has experimented with lots of different methods and painting techniques during her painting career. Luckily, Robin has always had the freedom to express her feelings and approach the world with utter reliability and enthusiasm which comes across in her works of art.

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Martin Leman is one of the world’s most prolific painters of cats - a subject he has made his own through countless exhibitions around the world, huge publishing successes and book sales of over half a million. He also has the rare achievement of receiving critical acclaim as well gaining mass popularity.

His work has been regularly exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Shows and in the past has hung in a group show with some of the greatest names in 20th Century British Art. His latest book ‘Martin Leman’s Cats’ with a foreword by Sir Roy Strong, has already sold-out and a second edition is in production.

In 2004, we commissioned ‘Horatio the Dockyard Cat‘, an original oil painting by Martin Leman. It depicts a ginger cat named after Lord Horatio Nelson in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The background includes HMS Victory’s masts (which can be seen from our gallery) and a Georgian storehouse (in the same style as the one our gallery lives in). This picture is one of Martin Leman’s best pictures and is sure to be loved by followers of the naïve animal art genre.

We turned the original into two exclusive prints (a small and a large) and a greetings card. All these are available from our gallery and our webshop, as well as other prints by Martin Leman, including some rare limited edition etchings.

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