Old Masters for Maastricht Fine Art Fair
Published March 9th, 2006
Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man in a Red Doublet” is set to go on sale for $32.4 million at the European Fine Art Fair in the Dutch city of Maastricht.
The dealer Robert Noortman is betting the value has risen 2.5 times since he bought it at a 2001 auction.
Maastricht, a one-time Roman settlement, becomes the world’s biggest old-master market from tomorrow through March 19, with a private view today. Some 218 dealers from Konrad Bernheimer to Johnny Van Haeften will offer about $1 billion of art to 75,000 collectors and museum directors, organizers said.
“To judge from other fairs I’ve been to in the last six months, the general mood will be optimistic, even buoyant,” said Franklin W. Robinson, director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He’ll shop for drawings with three museum trustees and two other collectors.
Among 24 new exhibitors, Gagosian Gallery and Wildenstein & Co. will pitch modern and contemporary art as the European Fine Art Fair, known as TEFAF, targets new collectors.
The fair began life in Maastricht in 1975. It draws twice as many visitors as Art Basel Miami Beach, the top U.S. contemporary fair. Collectors last year included Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of the U.K.’s Prince Charles. London dealers Van Haeften and P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. say Maastricht can contribute 30 percent of annual sales.
The Dutch fair is also a barometer of trends. If Noortman gets his asking price for Rembrandt’s 1633 picture of a red-jacketed man, which once hung in Las Vegas’s Bellagio Hotel, he’ll pocket a profit and confirm how quickly values for old masters are increasing.
`Rarity Price’
“There’s a rarity price for Rembrandts,” said Baukje Coenen, old-masters director at Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. in Amsterdam. “There are not a lot around anymore.” Dealers can ask more than they would get at auction, she said.
Rembrandt van Rijn, born in 1606, is the fair’s star this year, as Amsterdam and Leiden celebrate his 400th birthday with more than 20 shows. “Rembrandt-Caravaggio” brings together the Dutch and Italian heavyweights at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler will have 25 Rembrandt etchings on his stand at the fair.
“Portrait of a Man in a Red Doublet” is one of the more actively traded old masters. It cost $12.7 million in 2001 at Christie’s International in New York, according to Berlin-based Artnet AG, which tracks sales. Sotheby’s sold it at a 1998 auction for $9 million, Coenen said.
Auction Record
Out of 300 to 400 known paintings by Rembrandt, Coenen said there may be 20 or 30 in private hands. Rembrandt’s auction record was struck in 2000, when “Portrait of a Lady in Black Costume” sold for $28.7 million at Christie’s London, according to Artnet.
Old-master prices are about 90 percent higher than they were 10 years ago, according to the index-maker Art Market Research. A contemporary-art index, after nearly quadrupling since 1995, gained 13.8 percent last year.
Maastricht-based Noortman, who sold at least eight paintings in the fair’s first two days last year, also has a floral still life by Henri Fantin-Latour for $1.8 million, and about eight Eugene Boudin paintings, including a beach scene at Deauville, said Jeanette Gerritsma, an art historian and manager at Noortman Master Paintings.
Colnaghi and Bernheimer, its owner, which share a Maastricht booth, have “La Tarantelle,” by Jacques Sablet, depicting dancing Neapolitan peasants, and “Christ Blessing the Children,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his studio, said Rachel Kaminsky, Colnaghi’s managing director.
“We did well at the Palm Beach fair last month, so that bodes well” for Maastricht,” Kaminsky said.
Robilant + Voena of London and Milan will offer a pair of architectural views by Venice-born Sebastiano Ricci for 750,000 euros ($904,000), a Michele Marieschi work for 700,000 euros and a Luca Giordano piece for 500,000 euros.
`Constant Interest’
“There is a constant interest in Venetian views, and an increasing interest in the Caravaggesques” such as Giordano, who were influenced by the Italian Renaissance master, Marco Voena said.
Sales started slowly for many dealers at 2005’s fair. Organizers blamed snow that shut some European airports and delayed trains. One of the hottest paintings was a Jan Lievens portrait of an old man priced at $5.4 million. Van Haeften sold it within two hours.
The Maastricht event, which competes with fairs from Paris to Palm Beach, added Asian as well as contemporary dealers this year. Queues of hungry exhibitors may be shorter, as it brings on two new cafes and a brasserie.
The fair’s chief sponsor is Axa Art Versicherung AG, a Cologne-based unit of Paris’s Axa SA that insured about $480 million of art at last year’s fair.
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