Desirable art on a plate
Two fairs in the capital are bringing unusual and high‑quality pieces to the market. Colin Gleadell reports
For the eighth year in succession, a tented structure some 135 metres long has been erected overlooking the Chelsea Embankment, clad in a fabric replica of the Royal Chelsea Hospital so that it looks to be part of that historic building. Modern and contemporary sculptures stand outside, welcoming visitors into the spacious, classically proportioned aisles and exhibition booths that is the Masterpiece Fair for art, antiques and design, which opens on Thursday.
Although standards are high, not everything inside pretends to be a masterpiece. It is really the concept of the fair and its presentation that warrants that description – epitomised by the catering, provided by some of London’s top restaurants: Le Caprice, The Ivy, and Scott’s.
“There is an emphasis on sculpture this year, and we are thinking more about space,” says Philip Hewat-jaboor, the fair’s chairman.
Once past the entrance, visitors find themselves immersed in a specially commissioned installation by Chilean artist Ivan Navarro, one of the rising stars of the contemporary art market.
Then, turning into the fair, we are reminded of the past. Wartski, the jewellers, has reconstructed its original 1911 London shop front, and before it stands a first century AD marble figure of the god Silvanus and a colourfully painted 17th-century wood carving of a Spanish nobleman – both life size, like gatekeepers to the fair’s treasures.
Gallery owner Benjamin Steinitz from Paris presides over a veritable Aladdin’s cave. There’s a console table made for Napoleon I and a pair of huge Chinese export jars identical to a pair in Buckingham Palace. David Ghezelbash has a finely decorated fourth-century BC metal vase encrusted with oxidisation, as if rescued from the deeps of the sea – much as Damien Hirst has contrived in his current exhibition in Venice, but this is the real thing, priced at £1.25 million.
Agnews, celebrating its 200th anniversary, boasts Edward Burne- Jones’s The Heart of the Rose at
£5.5 million, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine – sold by Agnews in 1884 for £277 – at £4.5 million.
The fair is building a reputation for airing artworks that are fresh to the market. For example, Kenneth Clark, the great art patron and broadcaster, in 1932 commissioned Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and
Duncan Grant to make a dinner service of 140 pieces, including 48 circular plates on which the artists painted portraits of “Famous Women” – 12 queens, 12 great beauties, 12 writers and 12 artists (including Bell herself). When Clark died, his second wife, who was French, took the plates to France. The other parts stayed in England and were sold by his son, Alan Clark, on behalf of the estate. Alan wanted the famous women plates, but couldn’t get his hands on them. After he died, they surfaced at a German auction but have been kept by a private collector since – until now, when they have been entrusted to the Piano Nobile gallery with a price of around £1 million.
The fair coincides with London Art Week, an event staged by more than 40 dealers in their galleries. Tomasso Brothers are using the opportunity to announce their new gallery in Jermyn Street with a curated museum-style display themed around the great neo-classical sculptor Antonio Canova. Stephen Ongpin presents a rare commercial exhibition of drawings by the 18th-century father and son Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo. Although levelled at the connoisseur, their drawing technique and emotional sensibilities make them approachable for the amateur with £14,000£280,000 to spend. There is a surprise in store for visitors to the Saville Row gallery of 18th-century Venetian-view specialist Charles Beddington. Beddington now shares the space with former Tate Gallery curator Robert Upstone, who has been given a private collection of modern works by the leading exponents of the Camden Town Group – Robert Bevan, Charles Ginner, Harold Gilman and William Ratcliffe – to sell. Prices range from just £1,000 up to £125,000.
It is not surprising that Masterpiece and London Art Week attract the world’s collectors and museum curators to savour the rich tapestry of London’s art market. Long may it last.