Damien Hirst Francis Bacon Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn The Appendix: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Pipilotti Rist, and Paul H-O Art Collector and Former Lover Resolve Hirst Dispute Tyeb Mehta Body Image Pinchuk Plans Palatial Arts Center for Kiev

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The 19th-century mansion is a kind of Frick Collection, assembled by 19th-century industrialist, Sir Richard Wallace and filled with Renaissance-era paintings, sculpture, armor, and porcelain as well as 19th century European art.

Hirst contributed £250,000 ($396,000) to the Wallace Collection in connection with the show, both to refurbish the two galleries where his work is installed — including £60,000 ($95,000) to cover the walls in rich, light-blue silk — and to ensure free admission for the public.

The updated spaces retain the traditional aesthetic, and Hirst’s 25 works, including two triptychs, are installed accordingly, heavily framed and covered with glass, hanging from chains attached to picture rails.

Ranging in date from 2006 to 2008, the somber still lifes, all with inky blue backgrounds, depict in various combinations skulls, iguanas, a chunky wristwatch, shark jaws, a beetle, and a glass of water.

There are also a number of dark yet hardly ominous landscapes, with titles such as Woman of the Woods and Witness at the Birth of Medusa. But the palette is so limited, like an underexposed photograph, that the images are somewhat resistant to interpretation. White Roses and Butterflies, one of the more striking paintings — and many are not striking at all — has lyrical qualities; the butterflies are not realistic, as in Hirst’s more familiar, shop-manufactured style, but rely solely on illusion.

There’s not a single medicine cabinet or pill box in sight.

The paintings were first shown from April 25 to September 20 of this year at the Pinchuk Art Foundation in Kiev under the title “Requiem,” and an undisclosed number of them were acquired by the billionaire oligarch, who famously paid more than $10 million at auction for a Peter Doig painting, The White Canoe (1991), in 2007. Hirst owns the rest. Prices for the new works have not been published, but one knowledgeable source said the larger paintings were going for in the area of $3 million.

A exhibition of more recent — and more colorful — paintings will be open at both White Cube venues on November 25.

On hand at this morning’s preview was the London artist and 2003 Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry, dressed in drag. When asked about the work, he said, “The fight for the last original brush stroke was lost long ago,” before being mobbed by a posse of eight paparazzi with motor-driven cameras.

Hirst himself was also in attendance, answering questions about his new departure as a solo practitioner at one of the round-table interviews held during the preview.

Sporting tinted aviator-style glasses and a dark T-shirt, and with a black jacket draped behind him, Hirst spoke generously, telling his interrogators, “I’ve always had a romance with paintings, and I’ve always drawn.”

He said that he was getting closer to painting even as far back as when he completed his early ambitious sculpture Contemplating a Self-Portrait (as a Pharmacist) (1996). “I got to that point and kept backing off,” he said.

Asked about the recent switch, Hirst said, “It’s like being in U2 and not selling T-shirts.”

He seemed delighted with his new direction and with downsizing his mammoth production studios (though he said many of his employees have been kept busy framing the new works). “Painting is brilliant,” he said. “It makes sense of your life. And you don’t have to talk.”

An avid art collector with three Francis Bacon paintings (from 1933, 1942, and 1953) to his name, Hirst admitted “nicking” the dark background connecting the new works from the ’53 work, of a man in the sea. But he mentioned other influences as well. “I love Bacon, I love Goya, I love Soutine and de Kooning,” he said. “They’re similar kind of painters, kind of messy, go-for-it artists. Oh, and Rembrandt.”