Following the promenade of 10,000-plus art revelers through TEFAF during its opening festivities, dealers hoped for unadorned commerce and further signals of a recovering market on the fair’s second day.

There is certainly no shortage of bodies here, as London–based private art advisor Wendy Goldsmith found out. “One of my top clients got a slot at the airport for his G4, but he couldn’t get a hotel room, so he canceled at the last minute,” she said. “It’s a shame because he would have loved this fair.”

London–based Dutch picture dealer and TEFAF veteran organizer Johnny van Haeften also expressed optimism for the 10-day run, which ends next Sunday, saying, “There’s an eagerness to buy, as opposed to the reluctance we felt here last year. The atmosphere is so much better, and if it all translates into good sales, all the better.”

Though it is still too early to take an accurate pulse of the fair, the storied Old Master section seemed a tad sluggish, though some dealers in that arena recorded early sales, including New York’s Jack Kilgore, who sold Marten Pepyns Saint Cecilia, an oil on panel from circa 1600, which had an asking price of $143,000, and Georges Clarins Naiades et Centaures dans les Vagues, from the late 19th century, which carried an asking price of $110,000.

One of the standout pieces in the Old Master section was the 48-inch-high polychromed wood sculpture, Saint Benito of Palermo, by Jose Montes de Oca, which was on view at London’s Matthiesen Fine Art Limited. The circa 1725–50 work features a black–skinned saint in a gold cloak with outstretched arms, one of them holding an open book, and though it had been reserved by an American museum director, dealer Giacomo Algranti was keeping quiet about the potential sale. “I can’t give you any indication of the price,” he said. Several dealers in that patch of pricey real estate tried to wangle the price of the beautiful statue without success. Market transparency is not a requirement here in Maastricht.

There was a bit of celebrity sighting as London’s di Robilant + Voena sold a humorous outdoor scene by Giandomenico Tiepolo, aptly titled The Toothpuller, from circa 1775, for under a million dollars to former Sotheby’s chairman A. Alfred Taubman, who stepped down from his post in 2000 in the midst of a burgeoning price-fixing scandal.

Humor was also a theme at London’s Daniel Katz, as a remarkable and fully intact series of 30 small plaster–sculpted caricatures of Parisian actors and musicians by Jean-Pierre Dantan, dated 1832-1844, sold to a private American collector for approximately €800,000. Katz also sold a stunning black bronze portrait bust of Louis XIV by Francois Girardon for approximately $1.5 million to an American museum. The image is literally the poster child of the current TEFAF fair and could be easily mistaken for the 1986 stainless steel Jeff Koons sculpture of the same subject, Girardon's dates from the 17th century.

The much-hoped-for translation of good spirits into strong sales that was mentioned by van Haeften was more apparent in the expanded modern and contemporary section of the fair, where London and New York’s Haunch of Venison sold Andy Warhols “Marilyn Monroe” — a complete, 10-part portfolio of screen prints from an edition of 250 published in 1967 — for $1.5 million, to a Northern European collector. “You see people here that you don’t see in other fairs,” noted the gallery’s Emilio Steinberger.

Haunch of Venison had yet to sell its standout Damien Hirst, This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, a glass and steel vitrine housing a cut-in-half pig, which debuted at Gagosian Gallery in 1996. The price tag is $12 million. Haunch of Venison acquired it a few years ago, after Hirst bought it back, along with a number of his other most famous works, from his early champion Charles Saatchi, who had included the work in his notorious 1997 “Sensation” exhibition.

There were other works joining the Warhol portfolio in the realm of million-dollar-plus sales, including Jean-Michel Basquiats brawny Busted Atlas 2, from 1982, an acrylic on canvas mounted on tied wooden stretcher bars with twine, which sold at the booth of New York’s Van de Weghe Gallery to a German collector for $2.2 million.

Van de Weghe also sold two small, untitled Alexander Calder painted sheet metal and wire sculptures, from 1964 and 1974, at €240,000 and $550,000, respectively, as well as Duane Hansons life-size Security Guard, from 1990, a bronze statue polychromed in oil and adorned with mixed media and other accessories, for approximately $595,000, to a Belgian collector.

“My northern European roots help,” owner Christophe van de Weghehe explained, as he fiddled with a small sheet of red sale stickers. “I sold several things to Flemish–speaking people, and I speak their language.”
 
Nearby, Brussels dealer Paolo Vedovi, of Vedovi Odermtat, noted van de Weghe’s good fortune and hoped for some of it to rub off on his stand. “I have a lot of interest in the Picasso,” said Vedovi, referring to his Mousquetaire aux Oiseaux, from 1972, which was priced at $8 million. “I had an offer already, but I turned it down,” Vedova stated. “It’s too early to accept that kind of offer. My price is reasonable compared to what late Picassos have made at auction.”

New York’s Sperone Westwater sold Malcolm Morleys jaunty Crashed in Ocean, Survived, from 2009, measuring 93 by 72 inches and executed in oil on linen with string and paper attachments, to a Belgian collector for $300,000, and a new uber-realistic painting by Jan Worst, Stern Attachment, featuring a baroque interior and a glamorously dressed woman seen from the back, to a Dutch collector, for €90,000.

Sperone Westwater had yet to sell multi-million-dollar works by Lucio Fontana or Piero Manzoni — or, for that matter, any of the other less-expensive Zero Group artists they were showing. “There was some sense of caution,” said gallery partner David Leiber of the fair’s opening hours. “It wasn’t white hot. But we’ll have to see. This isn’t a fair that happens in the first five minutes.”

It might have felt that way at London’s Waterhouse & Dodd, stationed in the 19th-century Old Master section. The dealers featured a single contemporary work (which TEFAF rules allow), a large-scaled C-print photograph by Jean-Francois Rauzier, Versailles, from 2010, which was made in an edition of eight. The gallery sold every one of the works, at $25,000 apiece, on Thursday. “We covered our costs at the fair with his work in one hour,” said partner Ray Waterhouse.

However, the gallery had yet to move Gustave Caillebottes La Place Vintimille, an oil on canvas from 1878 priced at €2 million. “If you buy the Caillebotte,” quipped partner Jonathan Dodd, “I’ll give you one of the Rauzier prints.”