MAASTRICHT. It has become a cliché in the market that supply of old masters is drying up and that the best works have disappeared into museums and private collections, never to be seen again.

The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), held 10-19 March in the unlovely Dutch town of Maastricht, was a demonstration of just how wrong this is. This year 207 dealers attended, including the Wildenstein gallery, the first time in five generations the dealers have attended a fair.

Once again, exhibitors proved they are still able to find amazing works of top quality across a range of fields. Where else can you see, under one (admittedly vast) roof, two major Rembrandts, a Fra Angelico fresh from a show at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, a Clouet, a whole kunstkammer of amber including a piece from the lost Amber Room at Tsarskoye Selo, an elephant folio of Audubon’s Birds of America, and a throne from the Royal Palace of Warsaw?

This year’s fair was one of the best. With a booming art market, major works and whole collections are coming out of hiding. An extraordinary amount of capital is currently available; as the fair opened Forbes magazine reported that it has added another 102 names to its list of the world’s billionaires.

“You can smell the money this year,” said Andrew Fabricant of the Richard Gray Gallery. Total attendance was a record 84,000, an 8% increase on last year, while more than 100 private planes landed at the local airport.

Full Story http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=227

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Posted: 03|30|06 at 3:58 pm. Filed under: News.