Treasure House Fair harnesses the spirit of summer

From the June 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.

While Treasure House Fair is holding its third edition this year, one of its founders, Thomas Woodham-Smith, seems to have some of the great London fairs of the past on his mind. ‘We walk in the shadow of Masterpiece, and also of the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair,’ he says. Of course, he is also one of those involved in founding Masterpiece in 2009. When the fair – then under the ownership of MCH Group, which also owns Art Basel – folded at the start of 2023, he and his colleague Harry Van der Hoorn were quick to set up this successor. Returning this year to the Royal Hospital Chelsea – which also hosted Masterpiece – Treasure House is designed to be at once ‘very commercial’ and a ‘cultural, gastronomic, alcoholic event’ which harnesses the ‘magic pixie dust of London in the summer’.

Some 70 dealers and exhibitors, both established and newcomers, are arriving at Treasure House this year, bringing a range of antiques, decorative arts, paintings and more that includes the usual displays of antique silver, porcelain, jewellery, furniture and so forth, seasoned with some more curious pieces, among which is a drawing of a boat made by King Charles III as a child, from Robert Young Antiques. Several exhibitors are making their debuts this year, including AtKris Studio, a young Dutch gallery exhibiting in the UK for the first time, with a collection of 20th-century Italian furniture and decorative arts, by Gio Ponti and others.

Art deco racing greyhound brooch, 1930s, Cartier. Courtesy S.J. Phillips

This edition also includes a non-selling exhibition, ‘The Brilliant Bugattis’, curated by the sculpture expert Edward Horswell. Taking in some of Ettore Bugatti’s pioneering cars, as well as bronze sculptures produced by his brother Rembrandt and their father Carlo’s furniture designs, the show speaks to Woodham-Smith’s passion for ‘cross-generational stories’. So too does a, exhibition by Mica Bowman, who is showing contemporary sculptures alongside the 19th-century works brought by her father, the Rodin expert Robert Bowman. This, for Woodham-Smith, is key to the ethos of the fair: celebrating the greats but also ‘the new masters […] the treasures of the future’.

While part of the appeal for dealers is ‘the draw of London as a trading hub’ – around a third of exhibitors are from abroad – for punters, the fair is designed to be a ‘cultural package’. This year, Treasure House is expanding its sculpture walk with a display of everything from 18th-century bronzes to contemporary works that meanders through the Royal Hospital and out into the gardens. ‘We like giving people what they want rather than telling them what they want,’ Woodham-Smith says, and while a ‘visually impactful’ bar-cum-kitchen-cum-art-experience, for instance, may not be what everyone wants, the variety of Treasure House means that there is sure to be something to satisfy the pickiest customers. There is certainly no denying Woodham-Smith’s enthusiasm, his relentlessly can-do attitude. ‘If an opportunity came up to move the whole thing to Mars, we’d find a way,’ he tells me – and I think I believe him.

The Paisley Lawn Tennis Club (1889), Sir John Lavery. Courtesy Richard Green

Treasure House Fair takes place at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, from  26 June–1 July.

Gallery highlights

Cindy Sherman: The Women
23 June–26 October
Hauser & Wirth, Menorca

There is a pleasing irony in staging an exhibition of an artist so interested in ugliness at Hauser & Wirth’s most picturesque space. The first Sherman show in Spain for more than 20 years includes the series Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), in which Sherman photographed herself posing as stock film characters from the 1950s and ’60s, as well as some of her more unsettling work which makes use of prosthetics, heavy make-up and digital manipulation. 

Gabriel Rico:
A Finger Pointing to the Moon
12 June–1 August
Perrotin, New York

The Mexican artist began collecting discarded objects as a child and has put assemblage at the centre of his art, which probes the boundary between humans and nature. This show at Perrotin includes his latest series – wall works inspired by nierika, Indigenous ritual objects made using beads and painted yarn – as well as a wry homage to Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous banana-based work Comedian (2019).

Paul Thek: Seized by Joy
Until 2 August
Thomas Dane Gallery, London

If Thek is not as widely known as some of the cultural figures he associated with in the 1960s and ’70s, such as Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, this is partly down to the fact that much of his sculptural work was designed to be ephemeral and therefore no longer exists. His sculptures tended towards the bold and fleshy; his paintings, the subject of this retrospective, are more meditative and include gentle seascapes and city views.

Aubrey Levinthal: Mirror Matter
28 June–13 September
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

There is an almost childlike quality to the work of the Philadelphia-based painter, but it is that seeming simplicity that makes her canvases worth a second look. The enigmatic poses and facial expressions of her figures, who are often cast in everyday situations – having lunch, sitting on the sofa, in bed – seem to resist interpretation. Ingleby Gallery is mounting Levinthal’s first major exhibition in the UK, featuring works from the past decade.

Couch with Man (2025), Aubrey Levinthal. Photo: Neighboring States; courtesy the artist/Ingleby, Edinburgh; © the artist

Fair in Focus

Trois Crayons: Tracing Time
26 June–5 July
No. 9 Cork Street, London

Set up in 2023 by Alesa Boyle, Tom Nevile and Sebastien Paraskevas, Trois Crayons is a platform geared towards promoting the appreciation of drawings and works on paper and ‘demystifying’ the process of buying them – especially Old Master drawings, which are usually less difficult to acquire than paintings. For the second year running, Trois Crayons is hosting a selling exhibition at No. 9 Cork Street, in which works hang side by side rather than being split among exhibitor booths. Thirty-five galleries will be showing some 250 works (twice as many as last year), including studies for paintings, designs for clothes and more, as well as standalone works. As a whole, the event shows the full range of what drawing can be: compare a simple line drawing of a skeleton by Gustav Klimt (John Swarbrooke Fine Art) to a vividly colourful beach scene by Pierre Bonnard, on show with Ambroise Duchemin, an elaborate collection of fools drawn by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Stephen Ongpin Fine Art), or an Italian study for animals on blue paper, brought by Day & Faber, which dates to the late 15th century.

From the June 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.