TEFAF Opens With Master Optimism

Gilbert and George Lucio Fontana Sir Peter Paul Rubens Max Ernst Aniello Falcone El Greco Duane Hanson Gabriel Metsu

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While Sotheby’s made news in New York with the announcement that it would showcase 20 works from Steven Cohen’s top-notch, never-seen holdings next month, the auction house’s wholly owned subsidiary Noortman Master Paintings registered a major sale in Maastricht when an American collector purchased Gabriel Metsu’s small-scaled yet quietly stunning An Old Woman at a Meal from 1657–60 at close to the asking price of €3.6 million ($4.6 million).

“We brought the best pictures we could find,” said dealer William Noortman, who has run the Maastricht-based gallery since his father, Robert Noortman, died in 2007. “People leave their jobs and homes to come here for three or four days, and they focus on having a wonderful time.”

With the fair previewing yesterday and officially running today through March 22, it’s still too early to say for sure how well seven-figure asking prices will fare here overall, but a number of such sales have already taken place, primarily in the Old Masters section, where 50 of the fair’s 239 international galleries are situated.

“The best of Old Masters is the safest place to put your money,” claimed Konrad Bernheimer of London/Munich gallery Bernheimer-Colnaghi.

The dealer had sold Peter Paul Rubens’s Portrait of a Young Man (1610–12), featuring a handsome gent sporting a wispy goatee and a rather incredible white ruff, for between €4 million and €5 million. “I sold it to a client last year, and he recently called me to say he was changing directions and wanted to sell it,” Bernheimer said. “He made a very good profit.”

Bernheimer was not the only dealer doing brisk business in the fair’s opening days. London’s Johnny van Haeften Gallery registered six sales during Thursday's preview, including Maerten Ryckaert’s A River Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, a 17th-century oil on panel measuring 29 1/8 by 38 1/2 inches, for about a million dollars.

Paris gallery Haboldt & Co. sold a jewel-like composition by 17th-century French painter Sebastien Stoskopff, A Still Life with a Roemer Glass Flanked by a Cracked Walnut and an Incense Stick, for €650,000.

“In top quality, there is no price decrease,” said Duco Wildeboer of Haboldt. “Optimism has definitely flipped to the right side.”

Still, the dealer cautioned that only half as much business had been done up as by this time last year, adding that “it will be hard to sell run-of-the-mill paintings here.”

The Old Masters section contains some spectacular offerings, and among the most impressive, if you don’t mind a little blood and religion, is El Greco’s signed and dated Christ Embracing the Cross (c. 1585), which carries an asking price of €4.75 million at Madrid’s Caylus Anticuario S.A.

The painting, which unfortunately bears three faint horizontal lines from when it was folded for a time in the 18th century, according to gallerist Enrique de Calderon, is a moving and decidedly soulful work. It last came on the market in 1987, when it sold at auction in Madrid.

There were no takers for the El Greco as of this writing, but Calderon did report selling Aniello Falcone’s 17th-century battleground and mythical scene Tancred Discovers Clarinda, After Wounding Her Before the Walls of Jerusalem, for in the €120,000 range.

There was also some action to report in the modern and contemporary section of TEFAF. London/Zurich dealer Hauser & Wirth sold a surreal Max Ernst, Figure Humaine D’Insectes from 1931, which shows the artist pushing a painting in a dreamlike landscape, for around €1 million.

“It’s a really wild picture,” said gallerist Iwan Wirth. He added: “We haven’t sold anything above two million [euros] at this point. The air is very thin.”

Still, Wirth said, “there’s sophisticated interest on every work in our booth.”

At New York’s Van de Weghe Fine Art, Duane Hanson’s Old Man on a Bench (1977), a photorealist depiction of the artist’s father in painted fiberglass, sold to a Dutch private museum for €475,000. The work had been in the Saatchi Collection until about a year ago.

Paolo Vedovi of the Paris/Brussels outfit Galerie Odermatt-Vedovi appeared pleased as Lucio Fontana’s gouged black Concetto Spaziale from 1962 sold for around €2.5 million and a multi-panel Gilbert and George in its original artist frame, The Basket (1978), sold to a European collector for $600,000.

“The great thing about Maastricht,” Vedovi said, comparing the fair to auctions, “is that if you bring something incredible here and you don’t sell it, it’s not burned.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.