Explore our selection of fish paintings for sale. With art ranging from bold and beautiful oil pieces, to abstract paintings ready to hang, we have an ever-evolving selection of contemporary artwork from some of the most exciting artists working today. Discover our online collection of art, and explore paintings handpicked by our curatorial experts for you to purchase. If you’re not sure where to start, browse our Impressionistic, illustrative and abstract paintings.
If you’re after an abstract piece, Victoria Horken works by layering oils to create textural paintings of extreme movement and direction. With The Butterfly Exploration, Horken captures a fleeting moment, in which she meticulously depicts the colour of the fish and the reflection of light on the water. Horken’s use of impasto brings the motion of the painting to life whilst adding to the expressive nature of the subject matter.
About Fish Paintings
Paintings of fish represent marine life in or out of the water, and typically focus on their physical quality or their symbolic significance. Although not the most dominant subject matter throughout the course of art, fish have remained a constant and long-standing motif in painting and design. The portrayal of fish in art dates back to ancient practice, where fish designs and shapes were regular features of Egyptian art, and appreciated for their decorative quality and mythical connotation in Greek and Roman painting and sculpture. Fish even became an important religious symbol of early Christian art in creating a monogram for the name of Jesus, as well as representing the origin of life. The rise of secular art led to fish being popular subjects for still-life paintings during the Renaissance, where they would frequently appear in many different contexts throughout the course of 17th and 18th-century oil painting.
With the turn of the 20th century, fish were painted by modern artists including Picasso, Matisse and Magritte. Sometimes distorted, exaggerated and reimagined, and at other times detailed and somewhat idealised, fish took on new forms, contexts and imagery. Nowadays, the representation of fish in contemporary paintings often harks back to Japanese and Chinese fish designs, where detailed depictions of fish exist in whimsical settings. Rise Art artist Simon M Smith exemplifies this intricate and patterned approach to create mesmerising paintings that take on a floral and decorative quality. Smith’s painting The Thoughtful Minnow sets a lone fish against a pastel background to add a narrative to this delicate and captivating piece.
