New Approach to Selling Old Master Paintings

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article on old master dealers at the European Fine Art Fair and the innovative ways they are exhibiting the paintings and decorating sales booths. The dealers for both old master and impressionist paintings are working with decorators to design booth interiors and using contemporary decorative arts as accents.

An interesting point made in the article is the European Fine art Fair or TEFAF used to be primarily be a show for old master paintings, now, only 25% of the exhibitors display old master works as demand from collectors has slowed for non 20th century items.

The Wall Street Journal

At Thursday’s private opening of the European Fine Art Fair, Old Masters dealer Johnny Van Haeften stood back as collectors pored over a 1663 painting by Jacob Ochtervelt of a wealthy child tossing alms to an impoverished gypsy.

But as pleased as he was at the interest in the painting, offered for $7.5 million, it was his booth’s modern red leather chairs, hand-beaten iron desk and light-colored walls that made him beam. “The image of the Old Masters gallery with dark, dimly lighted walls and fusty old velvet curtains is gone,” says Mr. Van Haeften, 61. A few months ago, he enlisted his daughter Sophie, an interior decorator at London’s posh workshop Soane Britain, to update his once staid booth with an edgier look.

Mr. Van Haeften isn’t alone. More of Tefaf’s 60 Old Masters and Impressionist-era dealers are exploring ways to enhance their appeal with younger collectors.

Tefaf was founded in 1975 in the small Dutch city of Maastricht for denizens of the insular Old Masters scene. But as the fair expanded to include design, antiques, contemporary art, jewelry and works on paper, the appetite for pre-20th-century art began to wane.

In today’s art market, contemporary and modern art makes up three-quarters of auction proceeds, while Old Masters and Impressionist-era art totals less than a quarter, according to the research center Art Economics. While exact data are unavailable, Old Masters played a substantially larger role as recently as the mid-1980s, when the contemporary art market began its meteoric rise.

Occasionally, Tefaf’s dealers strike gold by acquiring iconic pieces by megamasters, such as an 1887 windmill scene by Vincent van Gogh that Dickinson Gallery is selling for $20 million. But such gems are rare.

In decorating his booth like a contemporary interior, Mr. Van Haeften says he aims to show collectors that a $4.7 million painting of 16th-century peasants hoeing fields by Pieter Bruegel the Younger can feel at home above their avant-garde sofas.

Deep-pocketed dealers like the Richard Green Gallery have started buying works by contemporary brand-name artists like Gerhard Richter and modernists like Henry Moore as stock and exhibiting them alongside rare, top-notch old master paintings.

This year, that gallery has a 1948 watercolor by Moore for $3 million alongside an 1897 cotton candy-colored cloud scene by Claude Monet for $15 million. The gallery introduced Moore’s work after seeing his popularity soar at London auctions, says British dealer Jonathan Green, Richard’s son.

Robilant + Voena gallery is also spreading its wings. In its booth, which exudes a contemporary feel, a 17th-century portrait of a penitent St. Peter by Il Guercino, selling for around $2.4 million, faces a $2.4 million, 1968 cobalt blue Lucio Fontana painting.

Mr. Van Haeften says he prefers not to integrate contemporary works like Fontana’s in his display, and Zurich-based dealer David Koetser is equally unconvinced. But Mr. Koetser was among the first old master dealers to revamp his booth’s look—beginning with his 2012 booth at London’s inaugural Frieze Masters fair, a rising Tefaf rival, where he displayed some works in translucent boxes dangling from the ceiling. These quickly sold.

At Tefaf, Mr. Koetser has picked a select few artworks to dangle. “If you dress up the wrong picture you’ll look like a desperate decorator,” he warns. One highlight at his booth is a portrait circa 1620 of Venus and Adonis by Anthony van Dyck that remained in a private collection and unknown to scholars until 1990. The $9.6 million depiction of a goateed Adonis and a fleshy Venus was likely modeled after the duke of Buckingham and his wife.

Tefaf is the only major art fair to have a works-on-paper section; it was launched in 2010. Paper dealers say the section is now a major source for new clients. Rembrandt’s works on paper are perpetual favorites at the Dutch fair, dealers note, however small a work’s size. Dealer Helmut Rumbler, based in Frankfurt, Germany, is offering a delicate 1643 8-inch-by-11-inch Rembrandt landscape for $1.3 million and a 1631 self-portrait from 1631, smaller than 5 by 5 inches, for $58,000.

Manhattan-based dealer David Tunick is selling a 2.5-inch-by-2.3-inch Rembrandt self-portrait, circa 1629, for $225,000. “Tefaf is the kind of fair where people can see the value in a Rembrandt only slightly bigger than a postage stamp,” says Mr. Tunick.

Source: The Wall Street Journal