Want a Tiepolo? Bring Your Roller Skates

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands – After New York’s Art Show went dark on Monday, Manhattan painting dealers Barbara Mathes, Salander-O’Reilly, Sperone Westwater, and Acquavella Galleries closed up their booths and hopped planes bound for a village nestled at the crossroads of Germany and Belgium. Today, the art world’s spotlight shines on Maastricht, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, where 202 of the world’s top art and antique dealers have set up for an 11-day sell-a-thon.The European Fine Art Fair (Tefaf) starts today at noon with “Private View,” a nine-hour, invitation-only opening at which museum groups, collectors, and the socially connected will pile into a giant convention center and pore over hundreds of booths stocked with thousands of items. The fair occupies 290,000 square feet – the size of four soccer fields. Fair organizers predict some 20,000 to 30,000 objects will be on view, with a total market value in the range of $500 million to $1 billion.“You will need roller skates, my dear, and I’m not being sarcastic,” was the cheery advice from A La Vieille Russie’s Peter Schaffer to this reporter, a Maastricht first-timer. “It’s monstrous.”Last year, 76,000 visitors came through (there were 12,000 at this year’s Art Show, by way of comparison). Booths are clustered by category, including four rare books dealers (for 13th-century Italian Bibles in Latin), 56 Old Masters dealers (for a Venetian landscape by Caneletto), 90 booths with antiques, furniture, and works of art (for a Louis XVI breakfront or 17th century silver candlesticks), and 34 dealers with 20th-century art (for a 2003 watercolor by David Hockney).“For me, it’s like going to one enormous shopping center for art,” said the co-chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department, George Wachter. “It’s like being in the Short Hills Mall for art. There’s every kind of art at every price level.” Mr. Wachter attends both in his capacity as an auction house executive and as a collector. The temptation to buy is strong. “You drag yourself to the middle of Europe,” said Mr. Wachter. “You go for three days to the fair and don’t do anything else. You don’t want to come home empty-handed.”Unlike at the Art Basel franchises or the Art Show in New York, the main attraction at Maastricht is not modern or contemporary art. Modern art was only added to the mix in 1991, in acknowledgement that the Old Master market is steadily shrinking as the prime pictures are plucked from English nobles and the walls of Venetian palazzos, landing permanently at museums.Maastricht was born as a venue for the Old Masters, and remains famous for Rembrandts (one sold at the fair in 1996 for $4.8 million), Italian Renaissance Madonnas, and the cool northern palettes of Dutch 17th-century landscapes. In 1975 the “Pictura Fair” debuted in Maastricht, with 28 dealers showing exclusively Old Masters and medieval sculptures. Another fair, “Antiqua” started up in 1978. The two merged in 1985, creating what is today tefaf Maastricht.“What makes this fair successful is the huge effort by dealers to make this a place of pilgrimage,” said Richard Knight, international head of Christie’s Old Master painting department and a former dealer who exhibited at tefaf for 19 years, served two terms as chairman of the European Fine Art Foundation, which runs tefaf (he remains a trustee).”It’s seeing under one roof the best of what the trade has to offer. It’s a concentration of beautiful things.”The fair justly deserves its reputation as a connoisseur’s show. Collectors known to be discreet cruise Maastricht looking for that obscure treasure only experts, or readers of Apollo or the Burlington, might recognize as important. The fair’s success rides on sales of Old Master paintings, and the audience for these rare old objects tends to be the hundreds of museums around the world.Often a curator, museum director, and a few high-level donors will travel to the fair (perhaps in a donor’s private jet). Once the group identifies a work that fills a gap in the museum’s collection, the wealthy museum patron will offer to buy the piece on behalf of the institution – thereby circumventing the lengthy acquisition process, which involves voting and board meetings.As testament to the fair’s tie to museums, the Detroit Institute of Arts, which has one of the largest collections of 17th-century Dutch painting in the United States, this year has shipped more than 35 artworks for display (an all-star list including Rubens, Poussin, Tiepolo, and de Hooch). Four of the works were acquired at Maastricht.A handful of New York dealers have been invited to show in the 20th-century art section. Sperone Westwater, from West 13th Street, is one of the chosen few. So what does a hip contemporary art gallery show at the premier Old Masters fair?“A large majority of the visitors might be more apt to visit the more historical section, and then wander into the modern and contemporary area,” said David Leiber of Sperone Westwater. “You can’t really introduce any artists. You have to try and bring signature works that aren’t too large and have a real presence.” The gallery is presenting abstract works that start with Sonia Delaunay, move to the 1950s and 1960s with paintings by Manzoni, Burri, and Fontana, then leap ahead to Andy Warhol and Richard Tuttle.The New York collectors who venture alone to Maastricht are the true devotees. It requires a bit more effort than pulling on the Lily Pulitzer and heading to Palm Beach. In stark contrast to Basel or Miami Beach, Maastricht is the antiscene: Dealers have dinner with other dealers, and maybe a collector or two. Understated is the preferred style at the most scholarly of fairs.“Maastricht is for the true collector who doesn’t feel they have to dress up for the show,” said Mr. Schaffer. “Because they are not there to be seen by other people.They are there to look.”

Want a Tiepolo? Bring Your Roller Skates

Want a Tiepolo? Bring Your Roller Skates

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