The TEFAF art fair in Maastricht turns 25 years old tomorrow, and in its lifetime, it has become the world’s best art fair. It’s known, of course, for showing Old Masters (experts estimate that some 70% of Old Masters on the market are shown first at Maastricht), but it has grown to include modern works. Now, 46 of the 260 dealers at the fair show 20th and 21st century works. Plus, there’s jewelry; in 2009, a design section was added. And it now admits six young galleries for a one-time presence.
Last March, nearly 74,000 people, including representatives from 225 museums, made the trek to Maastricht – vs. about 65,000 for Art Basel and about 50,000 for Art Basel Miami Beach.
This year, I decided to join the crowd. I haven’t been in ages, though in 1998, I wrote an article for The New York Times about the strict vetting of offerings in Maastricht headlined “The Old Masters? They’re the Ones Inspecting the Art; At the Maastricht Fair, Security Teams Come With Magnifying Glasses.” This seemed to be the year to return.
To celebrate this year’s jubilee, TEFAF is publishing a book illuminating some of the best items sold there, for example:
- In 2008, a private collector bought van Gogh’s portrait, “The Child with an Orange,†at right, which he painted during the last weeks of his life, from Dickinson of London and New York. It had not been on the market for more than 90 years, and had an asking price of more than $30 million.
- In 2002, an American collector purchase a recently rediscovered drawing by Michelangelo from by Jean-Luc Baroni of London, “Mourning Woman,†which was priced at €13 million. It had been found pasted into an album of otherwise undistinguished drawings in the library at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, England, and is one of the earliest works on paper by Michelangelo to have survived.
- In 2003, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston purchased a previously unrecorded Regency Bed attributed to Thomas Hope and dating from c1805 – one of the most original pieces in English furniture.
I’m expecting even better this year (it runs through Mar. 25).
This all means that I may not post daily during the next few days, though I will if I have time.