July-August 2010

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Everyone’s first question at this year’s European Fine Art Fair at Maastricht, which opened last week, was ‘How do they do the flowers?’ The broad corridor through which visitors enter the fair was lined from floor to ceiling with individual rose heads, like a Damien Hirst spot painting, each back-lit in soft pink or white. The effect was ravishingly pretty. The second question was ‘what mood are the dealers in?’ Poor news from the recent Palm Beach art fair had been followed by even worse news from Dubai’s. If Maastricht, the world’s pre-eminent non-specialist art fair, had disappointing results everyone knew that the market was in for a worst time than feared.

    At Apollo’s party for exhibitors on the evening before the fair the mood was guardedly optimistic. However, as always when dealers congregate, the conversation was dominated by gossip, and as the party continued news of discoveries and of vetting problems began to leak out. There was much excited talk about a bronze crucifix by Bernini, unveiled almost unannounced on Piacenti’s stand. It had a mouth-watering provenance from the Chigi family in Rome – ‘ And it’s so cheap’ said one expert. ‘With Italian dealers you usually have to knock three noughts off before you can start negotiating.’ Vetting dragged on this year – the Old Master vetters were in the fair until after eight that evening. The next day it emerged that one of the expected highlights, a Poussin of a satyr with a nymph on his back, had been vetted off Derek Johns’s stand although it had been accepted by Pierre Rosenberg, author of the forthcoming Poussin catalogue raisonée.

    The fair opens with a day-long vernissage, a busy whirl of endless champagne and canapés and queues to get onto the most popular stands. From the viewpoint of Apollo’s stand it was possible to be astonished once again at the sight of the very rich fighting for free sandwiches. The next day, when selling is more evident, felt less manic than last year, but equally busy and more focused. All the dealers I spoke to were cheerful. Konrad Bernheimer had sold his beautiful Rubens portrait of a young man and on S.J. Phillips’s stand, cases of renaissance jewellery were being emptied virtually as I watched. When I bumped into a celebrated silver historian I mentioned that Lewis Smith of Koopman Rare Art had told me that silver had been selling virtually from the moment the doors opened, whereupon the scholar blushed, and reached into his Apollo carrier bag to show me a bubble-wrapped package – ‘It’s a nineteenth-century sugar basin by a maker I’d never heard of and really pretty …’ It seemed like an excellent omen.

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