Fine Art

Lord Fortrose, later Earl of Seaforth, is the central figure in this painting. He is shown in his rented apartment in Naples, watching his guests practising their fencing moves. The man in black at the table is the Neapolitan composer, Nicolo…

Full length portrait of the explorer Sir Richard Burton dressed for fencing and holding a foil.

The scene comes from Molière's satirical comedy The Bourgeois Gentleman, which was first performed in 1670. Monsieur Jourdain wishes to be thought of as a gentleman. In demonstrating his new fencing skills to his maidservant Nicole, he is embarrassed…

The Fencing Master is one of two oil paintings of this subject by Melchers. They belong to a small group of full-length pictures of men dressed for their occupational roles. These works are not commissioned portraits but genre paintings in which the…

Portrait of Maître d'armes Arsène Vigeant painted by the American painter John Singer Sargent. From "Les insolites du musée de la Cour d’Or de Metz : un portrait pour sceller l’amitié," Le Republican Lorrain, August 20, 2016 [Link]: "Né à Florence…

Portrait of Maître d'armes Barthélémy fully dressed for fencing with a foil in his right hand and a mask under left his arm.

Isaac Lazarus Israëls was a Dutch painter associated with the Amsterdam Impressionism movement. This painting depicts an instructor teaching sabre to five students in a fencing school.