It's been over for a week, but I feel compelled to post pictures from my visit to the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair. Before it ended, I was able to spend several hours with dealers and buyers one of the longest-running and grandest art fairs in Europe. 

Despite the gloom and doom supposedly hovering over the art world, there was a great deal of optimism from both dealers and collectors at the Fair. I came on the next to last day, and nearly everyone of the dealers of nineteenth-century or traditional art I talked with had sold a large number of his or her inventory. This was not the case with contemporary art dealers I met. Though not scientific, to me it indicates the slow and steady, if not always sexy, appeal of working with established genres.

While there were world-class  ceramics, furniture, modern art , works of silver and ancient relics, I was principally focused on nineteenth-century academic works. The photos from my visit, therefore, are a terribly unbalanced representation what was on view. Sorry.

Another thing to keep in mind: As in past review of fairs, I have taken photos of these images in person, at the fair and the results are sometimes surprisingly and sometimes less than ideal. 

The first work that caught my eye was a remarkable sketch (above) by  Géricault. Known for his obsession with horses--entire coffee-table books having been dedicated to them--its still startling to see one in person, and how much he can conjure with so few few lines.

Someone once told me a joke: "Question: What do you call the crumbs that fall from Richard Green's table? Answer: Cake."

The implication was that Richard Green Galleries is remarkably consistent in getting the best of the best. Most dealers and collectors would be satisfied to have the slightest portion of what this London dealer offers.

Previous to arriving several people had suggested that if I saw one work at Grosvenor, it should be the Green's Lesbia and her Sparrow (above). A cult following of British Olympic painters (e.g. Leighton, Tadema, Godward, and Poynter) has come fruition in the pas three decades. Poynter is one of the group's finest, and this is one of his gems. 

Lesbia was the great love of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84-52 BC) and the subject of 25 of his surviving poems. Poynter chose one in particular as the subject for this painting: 

Sparrow, my girl’s darling

Whom she plays with, whom she cuddles,

Whom she likes to tempt with finger-

Tip and teases to nip harder

When my own bright-eyed desire

Fancies some endearing fun

And a small solace for her pain,

I suppose, so heavy passion then rests:

Would I could play with you as she does

And lighten the spirit’s gloomy cares!

(cited in My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, ed. Jeffery Eugenides, Harper Perennial, London, 2009, p. x).

Poynter began his career working in stained glass and cabinetry. This probably contributed to his heightened use of color and remarkable ability to imitate various materials, a skilled often needed wood graining.

Sir Alfred Munnings described Frederick Henry Prince (above) as "one of the most amazing characters I had ever met . . . a grown up boy." This painting was commissioned by Prince, showing him at one of his favorite activities and the kind of scene Munnings had made his name producing: sporting pictures. If you are not familiar with Munnings' work, you can be forgiven. Due to the way his paintings are sold--at sporting auctions and not nineteenth-century art auctions--outside of Great Britain, Munnings has not received the recognition his skill merits.

Everything in this painting is world class: the figures, the composition, observation of nature, and the economy of materials (note in particular the tails of the dogs; some only consisting of a single stroke.). Munnings is a genius.

Leytens is one of those great Flemish painters following in the wake of the Brueghel dynasty. There were so many wrote compositions mass-produced in enromous artist studios. Works that are able to transcend the typical formulae to create something original and compelling. The light and darks Winter landscape . . . (Above, and pitifully captured by my camera) made this work visible from far away. Upon close inspection it has all the charm of cabinet paintings from the period that were often meant to be viewed with a magnifying glass.  

Behold the power of narrative painting. A family has lost the recently-deceased patriarch's will, and a scoundrel--seen exiting stage right--trying to take advantage of the resulting ambiguity. After searching through numerous documents--in the foreground and on the table--the will is held high and the rightful, and obviously deserving, inheritors are vindicated. Mustached evil is chased out the door by the family dog, the embodiment of fidelity.

Though I haven't found it yet, it is highly likely that George Smith produced The Will Found to be a print. Prints and contracts with printers were often more lucrative for painters than the sale of the original work. Such was the case with Holbien in the eighteenth century.

There is disappointingly little written about James Webb, who regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy. The preponderance of his output was in watercolor, not oils. Yet, he shows an astounding facility and painterliness in this work.

Look at this beautiful passage of clouds! 

Robert Bowman is one of the world's great dealers and experts of nineteenth-century sculpture. For several years he maintained both contemporary and nineteenth-century galleries. However, a few years ago, he downsized by closing his nineteenth-century gallery and showing those works almost exclusively at fairs like Maastricht and Grosvenor.

This year Bowman had several works by artists like Leighton and Rodin that can be seen in larger scale versions in museums around the world. Seeing The Sluggard (above), at this small size gave me a completely different eperience than the larger-than-life version I am used to seeing at the Royal Academy in London. While I find the larger version imposing and dynamic, this appears more delicate bring out a kind of beauty I hadn't seen in the other. Also, the patina of this smaller work is beautifully rendered.

Claudel's piece L'Abandon (above) was given a place of prestige at Bowman's booth; and, it deserves all the attention it gets. According to Bowman:

This 1905 rare bronze . . . is the earliest edition ever seen on the open market. This is the second of an edition limited to 18, the first cast having been kept by the owners of the foundry.

Claudel, was 18 years old when she met and began a 15-year affair with August Rodin, aged 42. Understandably, Rodin had an enormous influence on her work. Bowman relates that the statue borrows from and reverses the gender roles of Eternal Spring (1881) by Rodin and is based " on the eponymous 5th century Hindu legend in which the heroine, Sakoutala, loses the affection of her beloved prince only to regain it once more."

Baily is the sculptor of the iconic statue of Lord Nelson, standing atop the column in Trafalgar Square in London, perhaps the most seen statue in the country. The monument to Nelson was completed in 1843, and Psyche (above) statue was finished the same decade.

Psyche, unlike the statue of Lord Nelson, is meant to be seen at an intimate range. The delicate butterfly is held in beautifully articulated fingers that include minute details of fingernails and lines in the palm.  

The statue is the epitome of idealistic beauty and looking at it, even briefly, can drop your blood pressure by several points.

Directly across from the Bowman Galleries stall was the that of Joanna Booth, a dealer in mediaeval and archaic works of art. St. Martin dividing his cloak for a beggar (above) is a remarkably fully-realized piece. This single angle of the work does not adequately capture the full effect it has in person. The beggar with a wooden leg, the bold gesture of the Saint cutting the cloth, and the interesting choice to make one so much larger than the other, the author's mastery in depicting varied textures. . . here it looks almost like a cartoon caricature; but, in person, it takes on a majestic air that is humbling.

For me, going to museums is exhausting, but I rarely get weighed down at fairs like Grosvenor. This is due in part to the kind of paintings, like The Toyshop Window (above) rarely, if ever, shown at museums. Museum are after a kind of gravitas in their paintings. Unfortunately, this makes a whole category of paintings, full of charm and humor, absent from public exhibitions. Like eating heavy foods all the time, I get museum indigestion. Sometimes, I want dessert or, at least, a sorbet, to cleanse my palate.

I wanted to begin and end this post with my favorite work from the exhibition: For the Squire (above) by John Everett Millais. Millais's works rarely appear in the private market; and, when they do, it is not often in the form of a fully-realized canvas. It is the kind of work that will never be featured in a show due to the lack of drama. It has all the so-called sentimentality that turns many off to the period. 

For me there is a purity of spirit, an innocence in this work that is communicated in a way that only painting can. The narrative--the delivering of a letter--is the lightest of pretexts for painting this little girl. Unlike the style that characterized his early Pre-Raphaelite works, this painting is not consumed with details. (The background, fabric, and hair are more suggested than copied.) Done when he was 53, it seems the product of a mellowed Millais.

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There are many, many more works not included in this post that I have uploaded to my Flickr account. (In some cases, a work is followed by a photo of its label. That's my way of remembering what I've seen and where I've seen it.)

According to Victor Bardia, Feriarte is Europe's largest annual Fine & Decorative Art fair. Bardia is one of the event's principal organizers. I met him and his son, David Bardia, at their gallery, Victor I Fills, during my last trip to Madrid. At that time, Bardia extended an invitation for me to return for the Fair. I'm grateful he did.

I've been to a number of fairs over the years and was skeptical Spain's fair could be larger than others. If it was, I assumed, it must be of lesser quality. Having walked at a casual pace for three hours, I thought I had seen all there was only to pass through a door that revealed another space, filled with more exhibitors and larger than the last. In total, I spent nearly eight hours on my feet, talking with dealers and collectors. For the most part, I was impressed by the quality of pieces, which were at least comparable, and often superior, to those of other fairs like Olympia or BADA in London.

Each dealer I met, with the exception of one--a German gallery that specialized in Russian and German turn-of-the-century art--was based in Spain. The majority of exhibitors had galleries in Madrid, Barcelona or both. Works at the fair, which ran from November 15 to 23, were overwhelmingly Spanish, or from former Spanish territories (e.g. The Netherlands, Naples) with small but impressive selection of works by Italian artists. There was a surprising dearth of Latin American and other foreign works of art, perhaps reflecting a lack of foreign buyers at this year's fair.

More than one dealer told me that compared to previous years, visitors were down by one half or two thirds. These are difficult times for art fairs and dealers. In other words, it was a buyers market. I was often surprised by low prices for objects and paintings that, less than a year ago, I had seen at much higher prices in the same galleries. For the occasion, dealers were bringing out their best pieces. The quantity of works was astounding--an art historian's dream.

Two Laughing Girls by Borrell is a wonderful example of the kind of academic painting taught and practiced in late-nineteenth century Rome. Though Paris was undeniably the center of the art world a number of painters work and studied in the Eternal City.

Borrell brilliantly draws the girls into our space by incorporating ornamentation from the neoclassical frame into the painting. The last two centimeters of the canvas are a combination of gesso and gold leaf over which he has painted one the two girls leaning her elbow on a Greek key patterned frieze. Seeing the piece, I wondered if Borrell had seen works by Dutch painters like Gerrit Dou, a contemporary of Rembrandt, who played similar visual tricks with his canvases.

With so many religious works, at times the fair seemed like a destination for pilgrims. God, the Virgin, and Saints were everywhere, covered in gesso, gold and pastel-colored oil paints. A number of the exhibitor's stall were set up as small houses of worship, with some even burning incense.

Spanish pieces like Christ crowned with thorns reflect skills brought the country by workmen from the Netherlands. Through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, The Netherlands were Spanish territory. A number of Netherlandish artists moved to Spain, infusing a northern realism--as opposed to classical idealism--into Spanish sculpture and painting.

Having made his name in abstract painting and Cubism, some people are surprised to learn that Picasso was trained as an Academic painter. He studeid at the academy in Barcelona, where he produced a number of figure studies in charcoal and a few oil paintings. Some can be seen as the Picasso Museum, installed in his former home in Barcelona. His ability to accurately render the human figure, especially in chalk, is impressive.

I was surprised to see one of his academic oils available at the fair. The work is evidence of his early propensity towards breaking down objects into basic forms. The shadows in Torso of a Young Man are sharp, clearly delineating muscles and separating the figure from its background. To me, the head and the body appear to belong to different figures, which is, perhaps, a choice or, more likely, a reflection of his inexperience. (He was only sixteen when it was painted.)

Once overseen by Julius Caesar and the birthplace of the Emperor Hadrian, Spain was one of of Rome's most important provinces. Besides the obvious inheritance of a Latin language, Spain retained a number of Roman works of art and architecture. A few Feriarte stalls were dedicated exclusively to ancient sculpture and architectural pieces (e.g. fountains, doorways).

It's not every day that a Ribera could be yours. Considered one of Spain's greatest painters, Ribera's oeuvre is represented in nearly every major European museum. Ribera was born in Valencia but moved to Naples, which was a Spanish territory at the time. Naples was home to a number of influence painters, such as Giordano and Caravaggio, who established a taste for religious paintings with earthy, realistic people.

Many of Ribera's works are contemplative with figures deep in thought or asleep. In this, he has captured a fleeting moment, when the Saint receives his assurance of a place in heaven. Saint Jerome, a fifth-century compiler of the Bible, was a favorite subject of Ribera. (Maybe it would be more accurate to say Ribera's patrons loved the way he painted Jerome, making it a regular request.) I've seen perhaps eight versions of Saint Jerome by the painter. I was particularly taken by the brilliant light in this one. The arrival of the angel above Jerome's head brings light on the elderly man's torso. Up close, his chest and belly are a soup of oily paint that, despite their fluidity, are convincincly skin like.

Both this and the image from the previous post of a tree trunk in front of a rug were on display in the stall of Rica Basagoiti from Madrid. Once rugs were considered the most luxurious items in a collection. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish and Dutch put rugs like these on their tables, rather than on the ground. Walking on them would have been considered the height of conspicuous consumption.

The display of these rugs by Rica Basagoiti seemed to return these rugs to a level of prestige that was appropriate to their era. In the above image, a large magnifying glass is placed several feet from the rug, making the richly-preserved colors jump out at anyone passing by.

Jiménez was a Spanish painter who had moved to Paris, where he regularly participated in the annual Salons--one of the few Spanish painters to do so. His work careful attention to detail and tendency to paint figures in period costume are reminiscent of the French painter Meissonier, who was popular in Paris at the time.

Though this is a small work, it shows off Jiménez's arsenal of skils and powers of observation. The figure seems to be well relaxed and effortlessly painted, but close inpection reveals countless tiny strokes. The light coming through the window casts a series of complicated shadows. I found myself wondering how much easier it would have been to have the light coming from a different direction or having the window at his front rather than his back.

By far, my favorite piece from the Fair was this German tankard, which stands nearly 25 centimeters in height. Made of several ivory sections seemlessly pieced together, it is a wonder of craftsmanship and artistry. Rather than discuss it at length, I believe a lengthy look at it provides a kind of refinement and appreciation beyond words. (Each image can be clicked for a much higher resolution image.)

For more pictures of the tankard, and a number of other pieces that I saw at Feriarte, visit my Flickr page.

Photo of upturned tree trunk placed with 18th-century Persian rug. Seen at Feriarte Madrid

This week and next, I'm in Madrid, where a number of impressive exhibitions and fairs are taking place, including:

• The 32nd Annual Feriarte: One of Europe's largest Fine & Decorative Art Fairs.
• Rembrandt, History Painter: An exhibition of painter's narrative works the Prado Museum.
• Between Gods & Men: A rare look at two major ancient sculpture collections, from Dresden and Madrid, on show at the Prado Museum.
• Sorolla Museum in Madrid: My report on a visit to the home and private studio of the Valencian painter who befriended Zorn and Sargent.
• El Escorial: The country palace of Spain's Hapsburg Royalty, which contains major works from their collection

All this coming over the next week in a series of posts.

Francois Joseph Heim (French, 1787-1865) Charles X Distributing Awards to Artists Exhibiting at the Salon of 1824 at the Louvre (1827) Musée du Louvre, Paris

In recent years, there has been increasing excitement for international art fairs (e.g. Art Basel in Miami, Maastricht in the Holland) that feature the works of the art world's current and rising superstars. In the nineteenth century, there were dozens of annual European art fairs, but the most influential and largest was the annual "Exhibition of Living Artists" known as the Paris Salon.

In his book, The Judgment of Paris, Ross King compares Salon attendance to today's most visited museum exhibitions:

[The Salon was] one of the greatest spectacles in Europe, it was an even more popular attraction, in terms of the crowds it drew, than public executions. Opening to the public in the first week of May and running for some six weeks, it featured thousands of works of art specially—and sometimes controversially—chosen by a Selection Committee. Admission on most afternoons was only a franc, which placed it within easy reach of virtually every Parisian, considering the wage of the lowest-paid workers, such as milliners and washerwomen, averaged three to four francs a day. Those unwilling or unable to pay could visit on Sundays, when admission was free and the Palais des Chaps-Élysées thronged with as many as 50,000 visitors—five times the number that had gathered in 1857 to watch the blade of guillotine descend on the neck of a priest names Verger who had murdered the Archbishop of Paris. In some years, as Many as a million people visited the Salon during its six-week run, meaning crowds averaged more than 23,000 people a day*

*To put these figures into context, the most well-attended art exhibition in the year 2003 was Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Over the course of a nine-week run, the show drew and average of 6,863 visitors each day, with an overall total of 401,004. El Greco, likewise at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, averaged 6,807 per day during its three-month run in 2003-4, ultimately attracting 574,381 visitors. The top-ranked schibition of 2002, Van Gogh and Gaugin, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, drew 6,719 perday for four months, with a final attendance of 739,117.

(Ross King. The Judgment of Paris. New York: Walker and Company, 2006. p. 17)

Comparing the Paris Salon to modern-day museum exhibitions is probably unfair. In the nineteenth century--before the advent of photography, radio, and movie theaters--painting was truly the most public art form. A more appropriate comparison would mostly likely be comparing Salon attendance to movie ticket sales. (How about comparing Ernest Meissonier's painting Friedeland, the painting sold for the highest price in the nineteenth century and a Salon blockbuster, with Batman Begins?)

Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815-1891) 1807, Friedland (c. 1861-1875), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

If that is true, it would also be appropriate to consider the Paris Salons as some of the most culturally significant and telling events of the nineteenth century. Recently, while undertaking a research question, I was surprised to learn that there is little published about the Salon as an intitution previous to or after the Salon de Refusées in 1863.

The cover of the official guide to BADA

Right on the heels of TEFAF in Maastricht (See previous post), I visited the British Antique Dealers' Association (BADA) Annual Fair in London. It runs from March 5 to 11. I wish it would have lasted longer.

The Fair gathers Fine and Decorative Art dealers from all over Great Britain. Somewhat naively, I had assumed that all the major art dealers would be located in London. I was wrong. For those interested in meeting knowledgeable dealers of a wide variety of affordable and high-end works of art, this is a great place to start.

Front entrance to BADA, held in a large tent in York Square, London (SW3).

Having just come back from TEFAF in Maastricht, it was hard not to draw comparisons between the two. BADA was much more personal. There was less pretense.

Picture taken in the first of three large rooms at the Fair.

I immediately had conversations with dealers that I didn't in Maastricht, and their works came in a wider range of prices.

As expected, there were many paintings--my particular interest--from Great Britain, but I found dealers with strong networks in Continental nineteenth-century painting as well. I would post images of these paintings, but dealers were concerned about distributing sold works online. I did, however, get the seller Henry Poole & Co. to allow me to post a suit made for Winston Churchill for sale at BADA.

How British.

A suit made for Winston Churchill by Henry Poole & Co. on sale at BADA.

Art Fairs, Ramblings/IdeasMicah ChristensenMarch 11, 2008 Comments

Cover from the guide to TEFAF

Friday, I took the train from London's St. Pancras International to Maastricht. It was the opening weekend of The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) held in Maastricht in the Netherlands from March 7 to 16, 2008. Unlike museums with limited budgets, dealers at TEFAF have the cash and motivation to restore paintings. Nearly every painting had a new coat of shiny, barely-dried varnish. On one hand, paintings looked nearly new. On the other hand, some paintings had been through so many iterations of cleaning and varnishing that paint had become dangerously thin, obscuring brushwork and coloring. I often felt I was looking at them through an unfocused lens.

One of the many booths dedicated to Old Masters paintings

It was overwhelming to see so many Old Masters works under one roof. I was especially impressed by Richard L. Feigen & Co. (New York) and Whitfield Fine Art Ltd. (London). I could name a dozen others dealers in the Old Masters paintings wing. I wish I could say the same for nineteenth-century art.

There were myriad Monets and a plethora of Pissaros, but where were the academic painters?! I saw a Gerome, a L'Hermitte, and a Breton, but their colleagues from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts were poorly represented. Those that I saw were overpriced by 50 percent or more compared to my previous experience buying at auctions and from dealers in France and Belgium.

As a buyer who deals principally in nineteenth-century paintings, this was not the best venue. It might have been different if I were looking for Old Masters and Modern works.

Many of the dealers I know and have visited in London were there (e.g. Richard Green with his sons Mathew and Jonathan, The Fine Art Society, Whitford Fine Art.) They had saved their best work for the event. By the time I arrived on Saturday, the Exhibition had already been open for two days and several of the best paintings were already sold. (The early bird gets the worm . . . or Bruegel, Monet, Rembrant, van Huysum, etc.)

Also, TEFAF seems to be more for people who want to see and be seen than for those hunting for a deal. Those of us who have sold art before know that there are some people who buy something if they like it, regardless of price. This has both negative and positive consequences. Inflated prices make current stock more valuable, but they also lead to unrealistic expectations by buyers and sellers

I was surprised to learn from conversations with a few--to remain nameless--dealers that some 30 to 40 percent of their annual revenue comes from sales at Maastricht. So, either I'm missing something or there is a huge advantage to celebrity-level art events.

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As a city, Maastricht is beautiful. It was too early in the year for tulips, but the town square, restaurants and entertainment overpowered any disappointment from the cold weather. A bit of advice: Book dinner reservations in advance, otherwise you will be eating at the bar.

Picture of the "old bridge" downtown Maastricht.