Date: Fri 29-May-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LAURAB

Quick Words:

Artfair

Full Text:

The Art Fair

(WITH CUTS) - LB

NEW YORK CITY -- If the International Fine Art Fair is the most ambitious and

rewarding of Brian and Anna Haughton's New York enterprises, it has also been

the most difficult.

In the five years since it debuted at the Seventh Regiment Armory, the posh

event featuring 68 exhibitors from seven countries has struggled to articulate

an identity, align itself with an effective charity, secure an optimal date,

and recruit buyers for the most precious luxury goods in the world.

This year's May 7-13 presentation suffered a few more growing pains. Qualified

praise, to put it kindly, by John Russell, The New York Times' feared and

revered former chief critic, and an ambitious but awkwardly conceived opening

night dinner might have derailed a less substantial enterprise. But the

International Fine Art Fair came through with flying colors, succeeding

through sheer originality and the brilliance of its eclectic offerings. What

is more, significant sales and an ultimately rewarding gala insure an encore.

The International Fine Art Fair is not much like Maastricht, the European

paintings and works of art show to which it is frequently compared. Smaller,

younger, shorter, and notably more convenient for most Americans, the fair is

roughly divided among Old Master paintings, French Impressionist and Post

Impressionist works of art, and drawings. A handful of American paintings

specialists add dramatic counterpoint, though, this year as last,

Impressionist paintings and drawings led sales.

"We've done very well. We've been in this show from the inception and have

always had good luck," said Hollis Taggart, who devotes his stand equally to

American Modernist, Impressionist, and Nineteenth Century painting. The New

York City dealer, who recently unveiled "Concerning Expressionism: American

Modernism and The German Avant-Garde" at his East 73rd Street Gallery, sold

seven paintings priced from $50,000 and $100,000. Included were still lifes by

Anna Elizabeth Hardy and Thomas Hart Benton, a plein air oil by Edward Cucuel,

a genre painting by Thomas Weatherman Wood, and Modernist canvases by Oscar

Bluemner and Alfred Henry Maurer. "Four out of seven of our sales were to new

clients. We're definitely meeting people," continued the dealer, who has a

Frieseke and a J. Francis Murphy under serious consideration.

The expanding market for American art received a jolt just before the fair's

opening with the announcement that Microsoft chairman William Gates had paid

more than $30 million for Winslow Homer's "Lost On The Grand Banks." The

upward trend was confirmed two weeks later at Sotheby's and Christie's, where

the Thomas Mellon Evans and John F. Eulich collections set new records for

artists as diverse as Childe Hassam, Frederick Frieseke, and William Tyler

Ranney.

Occupying a spacious stand to the left of the entrance, Adelson Galleries of

New York presented Edmund Tarbell's "Girl With Horse." In his sweeping 92« by

96 inch oil on canvas of 1892, Tarbell renders the delicate features of his

wife, Emeline, in contrast to the rugged naturalism of the outdoor setting.

Diagonally facing "Girl With A Horse" was "Worthington Whittredge," circa

1890, inscribed to the subject by his friend, the painter William Merritt

Chase. The historically significant work was a diplomatic gesture towards the

National Academy, of which Whittredge was a former president, from Chase, then

president of the rebel Society of American Artists. Both the Tarbell and Chase

were offered at undisclosed prices in the seven figures.

Anchoring the far left corner of the floor was Beacon Hill Fine Arts. The New

York City dealers' eclectic offering ranged from Francis Augustus Silva's

Luminist landscape, "Late Afternoon, Haverstraw Bay," to the Tissot-like

"Portrait of A Lady On The Champs Elysees" by George Vaughn Curtis and Edwin

Lord Weeks' evocative Orientalist composition, "Steps of the Mosque Vazir

Kahn, Lahore," circa 1885.

After a breathtakingly successful performance at this year's Winter Antiques

Show, New Haven dealer Thomas Colville returned with French Barbizon

paintings, sympathetic American landscapes, and some American portraits. Among

the later was "Portrait of Luigi Maratti" by Susan Eakins, whose reputation

was eclipsed by that of her better known husband, the seminal realist Thomas

Eakins. George Inness's "The Old Barn," $950,000, a colorful, semi-abstract

composition in green with splashes of red and blue, further explored the roots

of American realism. Meanwhile, Worthington Whittredge's self portrait,

$85,000, was a pleasing rejoinder to the Chase work on view at Adelson.

At Gerald Peters Gallery of New York, a wall of Arthur Doves set off a single

Georgia O'Keeffe. Bronzes by Edward McCartan, among them "Diana, The Huntress"

and "Frog Chorus," provided supple contrast to the fragmented surfaces of

canvases by Childe Hassam, Abbot Fuller Graves, Robert Vonnoh, and William

Glackens.

Known more for American clients than for American painting, Richard Green

nevertheless parted with Childe Hassam's "New York Scene: View of Union

Square," 1892, $800,000. More typical of the London dealer's display was

Melchior Hondecoeter's large and colorful of exotic birds, $500,000.

The lush assortment at Neffe-Degandt Fine Art of London included Edouard

Vuillard's "Etude pour deux femmes brodant sous un veranda," a loose, brushy

abstraction measuring 45 by 80 inches. A lender to the big Bonnard exhibition

opening at the Museum of Modern Art in June, Neffe-Degandt featured Bonnard's

"Marchand de fleurs ou Boulevard Exteriers," a $3 million oil on canvas by a

painter the The New Yorker called "the poet of evocative indirection." At

Neffe-Degandt, "The Course At Epsom" by Raoul Duffy sold to an American

collector for $95,000.

Making almost as frequent an appearance as Bonnard and Vuillard was Albert

Marquet, whose sunny, self-assured views of Paris and Marseilles turned up in

a handful of stands. Top choices included "L'Avenue de Versailles, Paris," of

1904, $620,000 at Galerie Beres, Paris; "Notre Dame de Paris" at Galerie

Hopkins-Thomas; and "Paris, Le Quai des Grande Augustins" at Philippe

Cazeau-Jacques de la Beraudiere.

In a series of intimate enclosures, Paris dealers Philippe Cazeau-Jacques de

la Beraudiere arrayed icons by Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet. A novelty offering

was a group of charcoal sketches by Monet satirizing personality types of the

day.

Galerie Hopkins-Thomas, one the International Fine Art Fair's perennial stars,

balanced a wall of Vuillards against an unusual Fantin-Latour picturing

mourners by the tomb of Berlioz. The Paris dealers sold a Claude Monet pastel

of Charing Cross Bridge, a favorite subject of the French artist, for about

$740,000.

Noted among the many other sales of French art was Camille Pissarro's "La

Route de Louveciennes," 1871, $1.9 million, and Jean Helion's "L'Homme Au

Parapluie,"1943, $350,000 at Galerie Daniel Malingue, Paris; Edouard

Vuillard's "La Bonteille avec des Fleurs" and Jean Louis-Forain's "Les

Coulisses de l'Opera," at the Lefevre Gallery, London; Fantin-Latour's "Vases

of Roses," 1875, $375,000, and Louis Beroud's "Au Musee du Louvre-Les

Murillo,"1912, $200,000, at Galerie Schmit, Paris; Antoine Guillemet's

"Morsalines for the North," $75,000, at John Mitchell and Son, London; and

"Landscape With A Gothic Chapel" by Victor Hugo, $200,000, at Spink-Leger,

London.

David and Constance Yates, popular New York dealers who carry a distinctive

line of small bronzes and cabinet pieces, sold 30 Nineteenth Century French

paintings, drawings, and sculptures for $50,000 to $100,000 each. A focal

point of their display was Antoine-Louis Barye's bronze of a tiger attacking

an antelope. It sold opening night to an American private collector. Didier

Aaron, specialists in French academy paintings of the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Century, sold five pictures for about $500,000.

Though the International Fine Art Fair's strength is in pre-modern painting, a

handful of Picassos tempted enthusiasts of later material. Galerie Fabien

Boulakia of Paris featured "Femme accroupie," a 1954 portrait of Jacqueline,

the artist's last wife, for $2.4 million. "Flute Player and Nude Woman" and

"Femme dans un Fauteuil" were lusty alternatives at Galerie Daniel Malingue

and the Lefevre Gallery, London. Malingue reported sales of Henri Laurens' "La

Negresse," $750,000; and Camille Pissarro's "La Route de Louveciennes," $1.9

million.

Two of the show's most memorable works were by Belgian Surrealist Paul

Delvaux. Purchased a decade ago from a private collection, "The Mermaid (La

sirene)" a 29« by 43« inch watercolor, gouache, and India ink on paper, was

offered by Bern'Art of Brussels for $1.2 million. Patrick Derom Gallery of

Brussels unveiled "Les phases de la lune II," 1941, a 56¬ by 69 inch oil that

is a companion to paintings at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum

Boymans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It sold to an American collector at the

fair's close.

Sales of Old Master paintings included "Winter Landscape at Sunset" by Aert

Van Der Neer, at Whitfield Fine Art, London; "Wooded River Landscape" by

Herman Saftleven, $50,000, at Daphne Alazraki, New York; "Cavalryman In A

Military Encampment," $275,000, "St Jerome In The Wilderness" by David Teniers

the Edler, $125,000, and "A Young Buck" by Alexander-Francois Desportes,

$32,500, at Bob Haboldt, New York; and two Paris scenes by Peter Bout,

$375,000, at De Jonckheere, Paris.

W.M. Brady of New York parted with 12 drawings and watercolors, including

Odilon Redon's "Cauchemar," a charcoal and black chalk noir, $280,000. Paris

dealer Neal Fiertag sold 18 drawings and watercolors. Among Thomas Williams'

15 sales was "Portrait of Karel Van Mallery" by Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

A gala benefit on May 7 raised $750,000 for Lenox Hill Neighborhood House.

Following a cocktail preview from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, the charity hosted a

sit-down, black-tie dinner on the floor of the show. The plan caused alarm

among exhibitors, who viewed it as a distraction unrelated to the business of

selling art. In the end, most were pleasantly surprised. Playful and

imaginative, the dinner party engaged the talents of many of the city's

leading decorators, floral designers, and retailers, and drew a new audience

of potential collectors.

Mary McFadden, Ivana Trump, Nan Kempner, and Lee Radziwell were among those

attending the preview. Collectors Harrison Ford, Kevin Kline, Jack Klugman,

Tony Randall, Joan Collins, Demi Moore, Michael Palin, Mike Nichols and Diane

Sawyer, Yoko Ono, and Valentino were spotted on the floor before the fair's

close on Wednesday.

The Haughtons return to New York October 16-22 with the International Fine Art

and Antique Dealers Show.