European Art Fair Is Fine

Plan ahead for the annual European Fine Art Fair--the world’s biggest exhibition and sale of antique paintings, prints, maps, furniture, objets d’art, jewelry, rugs and tapestries.

The fair will be held March 10-18 at the new Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Center. Maastricht, the oldest city in the Netherlands, with cobblestone streets and beautiful historic buildings, is in the province of Limburg, near the point at which the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and West Germany intersect.

The fair brings together more than 100 of the world’s finest art and antique dealers from the Netherlands, Great Britain, United States, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and West Germany.

This year’s roster includes Richard Green (London, paintings), Eskanazi (Milan, carpets), Robert Hall (London, snuff bottles), Johnny Van Haeften (London, Dutch and Flemish Old Masters), Newhouse Galleries (New York City, paintings), Vanderven & Vanderven (Netherlands, oriental porcelains) and Silber-Keller (Munich, silver, art nouveau , art deco). Participation is by invitation only.

More than 30,000 people are expected. They include curators from major museums plus private collectors, as well as lesser dealers and novices.

Everything on exhibit is for sale. Prices are from several thousand dollars to several hundreds of thousands of dollars, but, regardless of the price, each piece must be considered “important” to be shown.

In fact, the exhibition is carefully scrutinized by a vetting committee. The committee not only verifies authenticity, but screens each piece to make sure it is rare and in good enough condition to be included at the fair.

Items that have been overly restored are not accepted. Nor are pieces of furniture that have been “married,” i.e., the legs from a table with a damaged top have been removed and put on a different table top with damaged legs.

The vetting committee’s seal of approval is placed on every item, and copies are kept in the fair’s office.

Prices are fixed. Many of the tags on items are high, but they are based on genuine market value.

Walking into the fair is like entering a museum. Only there is no glass encasement between you and the objets d’art. You can actually pick up an 11th-Century Cambodian bronze statue of the Hindu God Vishnu or a Delftware platter made in the 17th Century and examine it at close range.

No one will stop you from running your fingers over a 16th-Century, Flemish, wool-and-silk tapestry of an idyllic wooden landscape. You are invited to slip the brilliantly glittering diamond and ruby bracelet that once belonged to a French queen onto your wrist. You may sit down to rest on a late 16th-Century Chinese huang hua-li yokeback armchair.

Most of these items have come from private collections and will go into private collections. The fair is the only time that they will be on public display.

The vast interior of the exhibition hall will be transformed into a series of small galleries occupied by individual exhibitors. Some of the compartments are decorated like opulent rooms, others are more gallery-like.

The diverse range of arts and antiquities will be presented in four sections, which makes viewing that much easier.

The Pictura Section covers, from the Old Masters to Impressionists and early 20th Century. The Contemporary Section includes post-1960 paintings and sculpture.

The Antiquaires Section offers European and Oriental furniture, bronzes, clocks, porcelain and glass, arms and armor, silver and jewelry, books and manuscripts. The Textura Section has textiles, carpets and tapestries, both European and Oriental.

The catalogue for the fair will be available only at the fair.

The piece de resistance at last year’s fair was a beautiful Charles X French rosewood billiard table inlaid with citron wood, sold by Philippe Dufrasne of Brussels. Its price was only revealed to prospective buyers, and was not listed on the fair’s registry of sales.

There were also gem-encrusted reliquaries from the 13th Century, a set of five 18th-Century Dutch glass paintings depicting members of the House of Orange, and a 17th-Century Flemish cabinet of ebony and stained fruitwood covered with paintings of landscapes. A set of stag’s antlers (German)engraved with “The Wise and Foolish Virgins,” dated 1563, was once in the William Randolph Hearst collection.

Items on last year’s listing of sales included a Peter Paul Rubens (1557-1638) portrait of a bearded man, which sold for $850,000 to a Swedish collector. A Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638) painting of Pan playing his pipes sold for about $104,000, while a Salomon van Ruysdael (1628-1682) river landscape cost about $700,000.

Boston’s Peabody Museum purchased a 1717 Chinese export plaster figure of an unknown gentleman and a rare 18th-Century Chinese blanc de chine group of a foreigner riding on a liondog--both for undisclosed sums.

A pair of 18th-Century Arita porcelain vases and covers cost $14,980, but an exquisite Galle vase, dated 1900, decorated with a landscape in blue and yellow brought $3,088.

Abraham Louis Breguet’s extraordinary traveling clock, made in 1817 and still ticking, was sold for $54,108. Two ornate golden bracelets set with pink topaz, emeralds and diamonds, made in England in 1835, cost $23,000, while a pair of fer de Berlin earrings, dated 1840, sold for about $1,500.

Contemporary art that was purchased at the fair last year included an Andy Warhol portrait of Marlene Deitrich (1962, gouache and graphite on paper) for about $54,108, and “Beuys by Warhol,” a silk screen and diamond point done in 1960 for about $11,723.

A 1972 untitled Willem de Kooning oil on newspaper, mounted on canvas, sold to a Swedish collector for about $67,635, and Sam Francis’ “Triangle,” dated 1975, was bought by a Belgian collector for $29,308.

This year the fair will present a series of 12 lectures by specialists. Speakers include curators from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and Brussels’ Royal Museum of Art and History.

There will also be a program of concerts and recitals, including performances by the Moscow Ballet Ensemble, soprano Helen Lawrence and Amsterdam’s Kamer Orkest. Maastricht’s historic buildings are used as venues.

The fair offers a gala first-night viewing and banquet. Tickets are about $50 U.S., including the catalogue. Fair hours are Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from noon to 9 p.m. Admission is about $14, including the catalogue.

For more information about the European Fine Art Fair, contact the Netherlands Board of Tourism, 90 New Montgomery St., Suite 305, San Francisco 94105, or call (415) 543-6772.

Prices quoted in this article reflect currency exchange rates at the time of writing.