John Singer Sargent Nicolas Lancret Doyle Dazzles Strings Attached Venice: Dark Waters Christie's Breaks Records at American Art Sale Slim Pickings Art Fair Spiffs Up Design, Pulls In Collectors

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Big Night
PALM BEACH, Fla., Feb. 8, 2006Art fair openings are generally glitzy affairsbut Palm Beach! really ups the ante.

On hand for the vernissage were, among many others, collectors Bill Koch, Audrey Gruss, Sydelle Meyer, Tom Quick and Lord and Lady Rothermere, of the British newspaper dynasty. There were also high-profile designers, such as Juan Montoya, Susan Zises Green and Betty Sherril.

Among the biggest draws on opening night was a gargantuan diamond called the "Star of America," at the booth of London and New York jeweler Graff. At 100.57 carats, it is, according to Graff, "the largest, flawless, octagonal-cut diamond in the world." Well, this is Palm Beach, and not surprisingly the booth was packed all night with serious clients, and those who had merely come to gawk.

Breaking Out of the "Dungeon"
The design of this year's fair won big points with dealers. Last year was what many euphemistically referred to as "high concept"black walls, black floors and little gravel gutters running along the aisles. It was, said one dealer with understatement, "very dark." Another dealer commented that one of last year's problems was older patrons tripping on the gravel in their walkers.

This year was lighter and brighter and cheerierwhite walls, blue carpet. No gravel. And four meeting places filled with greenery, the work of local designer Mario Nievera.

"Last year was like a dungeon!" said Johnny Messum of Buckinghamshire, U.K. gallery Messums Fine Art. He was thrilled on opening night, as he had already sold two pieces, one of them a late-19th-century portrait by Dudley Hardy for $17,500, and the other a 1903 still life of flowers by Arthur Chaplin for $70,000.

For the most part the booths looked spectacularand it's no surprise, given that dealers had a full eight days to set them up. This year the fair has attracted some new dealers, notably New Yorks Salander-O'Reilly and Jack Kilgore.

Masterpieces GaloreFor Big Bucks
The presence of an ATM machine just outside the entrance to the fair seems a bit quaint, considering the hefty price tags on the objects inside.

Consider the striking, $1.7 million painted study by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer at Colnaghi-Bernheimer. Formerly in the collection of one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters, it is a study for a larger composition. Landseer himself engraved it "my horse," stressing his personal connection with the picture. In that same booth is a painting of a minuet dance by Nicolas Lancret, one that Colnaghi's Rachel Kaminsky calls "the best example by him I've seen on the market in a long time." Its price: $1.65 million.

Robert Noortman brought a Renoir nude for $3.3 million; a Monet landscape for $2.6 million; a small picture by Matisse for $1.6 million; a still life of flowers by Fantin Latour for $1.8 million, and an unusual work in gouache and tempera on silk of a crowd of figures by Pissarro, for $2.7 million.

Adelson Galleries brought a painting by John Singer Sargent, Bedouin Encampment (1906), priced at $6.5 million. And Dickinson of London has an exquisite Hans Memling portrait, the only known portrait left in private hands, fresh from its loan to the Frick Collection's stunning Memling show, and carrying a price tag of $2.7 million.

By the end of the fair's first day, there had already been some notable sales, such as a large 1929 painting by Francis Picabia at Paris's Galerie Cazeau-Beraudiere for around $2 million. First-time exhibitor Historical Portraits of London sold a portrait of Miss Caroline Hopwood by George Henry Harlow for $50,000, and a portrait of the three-year-old John Tufton by Sir Joshua Reynolds was on reserve for $1.8 million.

Talking Antiquities
New York-based Phoenix Ancient Art is doing the fair for the first time. While Hisham Aboutam says Florida clients only make up about 10 percent of the gallery's base, he is giving the fair a shot. He admits he was advised to bring more decorative ancient art that would appeal to the Palm Beach crowd. As for highlights of his booth, he points to a Roman marble revolving panel with a young satyr and Silenus, circa 1st-2nd century A.D., priced at $400,000. Aboutam calls it "the finest example in the world." He also displayed a small, Hellenistic bronze statuette of a goddess, dating to the 1st century A.D. He gave the latter's price as "more than $500,000" and said that two museums had already expressed strong interest.

Aboutam says the current controversy over antiquities owned by American museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gettyand the accompanying media outcryhas only increased collectors' interest in the field. (It is worth noting that two years ago Aboutam himself paid a small fine after running into legal difficulties involving the importation of an Iranian object.) This spring, the gallery will mount an exhibition of some 26 Greek vases, with a scholarly catalogue. It's a timely show, given the Met's recent promise to return its Euphronius vase to Italy. "Italy's going after these pieces. All of this has exposed the existence of the market and the importance of antiquities," he says. "My new clients are surprised by how affordable these things are." New clients? "Some of them work for hedge funds," he adds.

Two of the vases in the show are already on hold, for $180,000 and $190,000, one of them to a museum that has not collected antiquities in the past, Aboutam says.

New Director Looks to The Future: More Outreach, More Contemporary
In early December, the fair announced it had a new director in Michael Mezzatesta, formerly director of the Duke University Museum of Art. A smart, clearly shrewd man with a scholarly attitude, Mezzatesta is currently preparing for the 2007 edition of the fair.

Speaking with ArtInfo, he says his advantage, coming from the museum world, is his ability to speak with his colleagues, directors and curators "in a language they understand," and to address the challenges they face with their collector base. He points to the perspective he is able to bring to the fair, given what he calls the "historical importance" of the relationship between dealers, collectors and American museums.

Anita J. Ellis, director of curatorial affairs and curator of decorative arts at the Cincinnati Art Museum, who was in town for the fair, told ArtInfo that Mezzatesta, coming from a museum, has "three things that will make him a great director for this fair: He is charismatic, he is a good manager of a complex institution, and he's a scholar."

For the fair's future, Mezzatesta says he hopes to broaden its outreach. "The fair can play an educational role," he says, adding that one of his aims is to increase the number of lectures, seminars and tours, and to work with museums that are bringing groups of collectors, particularly young collectors. He also wants to develop more contacts for the fair in Latin America, especially in countries he has worked with, such as Venezuela, Guatemala and Argentina. He also wants to explore the connections he made in Russia while he built a collection of Russian art at Duke.

Another change Mezzatesta hints at for next year's fair is the increasing presence of contemporary art. "I've inherited a drop-dead date of 1970," he says. "But I would like to stress the continuity with the present." (He quickly adds that the 1970 date does not even now preclude art made later; and in fact, the booth of Italian dealer Marco Voena has a Julian Schnabel painting from his "Big Girl" series shown at Gagosian Gallery in 2001, that is up for resale at $600,000; Voena also as has some Warhols from 70s.)

"I need to discuss these things with the dealer committee, but I'd like to invite living artists to show one of their works next to something older from the fair," Mezzatesta says.

Masters of the Deal
Meanwhile, trendwatchers will want to keep an eye on the Old Masters market. At Voena, hanging not far from the Schnabel, was a 17th-century Luca Giordano painting of a philosopher, priced at $600,000. "People are so surprised to hear that true Italian masters cost less than post-War and contemporary art," said private dealer Kristin Gary, who was manning Voena's booth. "You can buy a great Old Master for less than a million."

Church Meets State
The small group of American, French and British journalists staying at the Palm Beach Marriott this weekend while covering "Palm Beach! America's International Fine Art & Antique Fair, now in its 10th year and located a few blocks down Okeechobee Boulevard at the Palm Beach Convention Center (where it runs Feb. 2-12), certainly didn't expect to see eminent Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello strutting purposefully down the hotel's hallway towards a conference room one morning.

And yet there he was. Also to be seen in Palm Beach was Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston's Marti Mayo was espied chatting with the New Museum's Lisa Phillips in the Marriott cafe; the Whitney's Adam Weinberg was spotted making a cell phone call in the lobby; and Michael Govan, whose departure from Dia had just been announced and whose arrival at LACMA was still in the rumor stage (it was later confirmed), was seen talking on his Treo on the patio.

In an unusual and apparently coincidental overlap of the commercial and non-commercial art worldsin the minds of some, akin to the conflation of church and statethe American Association of Museum Directors was holding its annual meeting at the Marriott during the fairs opening days.

Adding to the strangeness was yet another seeming coincidence: A large sign in the lobby announced a continuous, Morgan Stanley-sponsored shuttle between the Marriott and the Breakers, which was hosting a hedge fund forum. In case you have been asleep for the past year, the art world's latest mega-collectors are, of course, the so-called "hedge fund guys."

Whether the hedge funders or the museum mandarins made it over to the fair remained a question, but the harmonic convergence led one to wonder

Images (top to bottom): © Patrick McMullan Co. (7); Courtesy of Graff Diamonds, New York and London; Courtesy of Phoenix Ancient Art, New York; Courtesy of Noortman Master Paintings (3); Courtesy of Marco Voena, Milan (2).