As art market observers waited anxiously this season to see if the big spring sales went boom or bust, one truth held firm: when in doubt, buy blue chip.
Presented annually by London promoters Brian and Anna Haughton, the International Fine Art Fair is as reassuringly traditional as art shows come. After 15 years at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, the benefit for the Frick Collection remains a top-flight source for conservative European and American paintings, sculpture and works on paper.
The cast of this 61-dealer show changes only slightly from year to year. It maintains an even balance between early and late, European and American, figurative and abstract, and two-dimensional and three-dimensional art. A heightened emphasis on Old Master pictures with sacred subject matter, a growth in the show’s already strong American art component and a small but satisfying selection of sculpture were among this year’s subtle trends.
The fair got underway Thursday, May 8, with a preview benefiting the Frick Collection, the Upper East Side repository of Western fine and decorative arts, Renaissance period through the late Nineteenth Century. The 500-patron gathering raised more than $270,000 for the museum’s special exhibition’s program. Rock star Jon Bon Jovi, a Frick supporter, was among the revelers.
A hallmark of the Haughton enterprise, which now includes the Haughtons’ adult offspring, Giles and Emma Jane, is management’s focus on institutional buyers. Directors and curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt, Dallas Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierpont Morgan Library and The J. Paul Getty Museum were this year’s honored guests.
In the Old Masters category, returning exhibitor Maison d’Art of Monaco featured “Agony in The Garden” by Mattia Preti, an oil on canvas of 1676‷8.
New exhibitor Moretti, with showrooms in Florence, London and New York, created a dark, chapel-like enclosure for its display of Renaissance altar paintings, including a gilded triptych by Jacopo di Cione (1365‱398), a Florentine who painted in the Byzantine style.
Secular still lifes by Melchior d’Hondecoetter and Pseudo Fardella were favorites at John Mitchell Fine Paintings of London.
Galerie Fabien Boulakia boasted sales of European paintings by Renoir, Vuillard and Dubuffet.
Simon Capstick-Dale of London favored Chagall canvases and works on paper.
London dealer Richard Green sold a Renoir oil of 1911, “Femme dans un Paysage,” a large Henri Le Sidaner view of the port at St Jean Cap Ferrat and a Kees van Dongen of Cannes harbor.
Gustave Loiseau remains an International Fine Art Fair favorite. The post-Impressionist French landscape artist was represented at McColl Fine Art of Charlotte, N.C., by “Le Port de Dieppe,” an oil on canvas of 1926.
Many of the show’s exhibitors combine French and American canvases of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century. At FraMonT of Greenwich, Conn., paintings by Marcel Vertes, Francois Farenc Gall, Georges d’Espagnat and Pierre Eugene Montezin joined “On The Balcony, Holley House, Cos Cob,” a soft pastel on canvas portrait by American Impressionist Elmer Livingston MacRae, a Cos Cob colony founder.
Pennsylvania Impressionism was a highlight at Owen Gallery of New York City, which featured “Reflections,” a meditative waterside landscape by Daniel Garber. Avery Galleries of Bryn Mawr, Penn., offered “Village in Devon” by Walter Elmer Schofield.
Thomas Colville is equally well known for French Barbizon School painting and American Hudson River School, Impressionist and post-Impressionist works of art.
“The best Barbizon School paintings are very good value. These painters are world known and had international influence,” said the New York and New Haven dealer, who included Charles-Francois Daubigny’s “La Barque au Bord de la Riviere” of 1871 and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s “Sous-Bois, dans le Parc de Merantais,” circa 1855‷0.
“I’ve never had a better year. Really good pictures are in short supply and I’ve noticed that people are buying as a hedge against inflation,” said Colville. To works by Kensett and Edwin Lord Weeks he added “The Trout Pond” by Francis Coates Jones, “Le Lande de Kerran” by William Lamb Picknell and, for Americana enthusiasts, Thomas Pritchard Rossiter’s “Liberty Freeing the Shadow of Slavery.” The small, allegorical canvas of 1865 probably inspired a print.
Lovers of Severin Roesen’s stylized fruit and flower still lifes had several from which to choose at Babcock Galleries, MME Fine Art and Debra Force Fine Art. Force’s centerpiece was “The Pearl Fan,” the virginal portrait of a young woman by Massachusetts-born artist Robert Reid (1862†1929). The oil on canvas was $600,000. The New York dealer also featured works by MacMonnies, Cropsey, Prendergast and W.M. Chase.
Tom Veilleux Gallery tapped into the sizzling market for regional American art, featuring major artists who worked or lived in Maine or north, including William and Marguerite Zorach, Rockwell Kent and Elie Nadelman. Two large bronze female nudes by William Zorach along with Marsden Hartley’s oil on board “Intellectual Niece,” hinting at Hartley’s experiences in Maine and New Mexico, were important offerings.
Vallejo Gallery of Newport Beach, Calif., put together a dazzling collection of American, European and Chinese marine paintings. Its centerpiece was Montague Dawson’s “Night Suspect,” an oil on canvas of circa 1950.
At Questroyal Fine Art of New York City, sporting artist Aiden Lassell Ripley was represented by “The Pond Cover,” an oil on canvas of 1947.
Several fine Robert Henri portraits included “Beatrice Whittaker” at Gerald Peters Gallery. The 1919 oil on canvas depicts a russet-haired ingenue dressed in a red kimono and holding a fan.
The International Fine Art Fair generally leaves abstract art to other shows. Notable exceptions included Hollis Taggart Galleries’ powerful trio: “Abstract Composition” by Werner Drewes, 1944; Hans Hofmann’s “St Francis,” 1952; and Grace Hartigan’s “Rough Ain’t It” of 1944.
Galerie Beres of Paris devoted one wall to circa 1920 geometric abstractions by Auguste Herbin, Lazar Zuperman, Henri Hayden, Leopold Survage, Marie Vorobieff Marevna and Jacques Villon.
An outside wall at Richard Green showcased abstract British painting by Ben Nicholson, William Scott and Frank Auerbach.
Sculpture ranged from a bronze relief portrait rondel of Beatrice Saluzzo di Corigliano by Luigi de Feo at Hill-Stone to Augustus Saint Gaudens’ beloved “Diana of the Tower,” a 29¾-inch bronze modeled in 1899, at Babcock Galleries. Modernist bronzes by Albert Wein were in store at Abby M. Taylor Fine Art.
Jacques Lipchitz’s “Woman With Gazelles,” a bronze modeled circa 1911‱2, was a major attraction at Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts. The Manhattan dealer was asking $950,000 for the figure, from an edition of seven, six of which are known.
In the same vein, Martin Du Louvre featured “Elegance,” a 1930 Art Deco plaster cast model of a detail from the monumental relief for the Maison Francaise at Rockefeller Center. The oversized figure passed from architect Wallace Harrison to New York University’s Grey Art Gallery to the Paris dealer.
London dealer Connaught Brown included a bronze figure of a reclining woman by Henry Moore, Britain’s most famous Twentieth Century sculptor. Another London dealer, Whitford Fine Art, featured “Tablepiece CCCCXXVI,” a rusted and varnished steel construction by Moore’s former assistant, Sir Anthony Caro.
Intimate, understated and immaculately presented, the International Fine Art Fair provides a luxurious opportunity to look and learn, to buy art with universal currency, or, with the help of seasoned experts, to invest in lesser known figures just now being rediscovered.
Next up for the Haughtons is the International Ceramics Fair & Seminar in London, June 12‱5.
For information, 212-642-8572, +44 20 7389-6556, or www.haughton.com .
