Around the Galleries
Stoical in the face of the pandemic, the organisers of Fine Arts Paris are pressing ahead with the fair, which, despite fewer exhibitors, promises its usual high quality
With a fair,’ says Louis de Bayser, president of Fine Arts Paris, ‘you’ve got a sense of what the following day will have in store.’ That seems true of precious little else in the French capital at the moment, which remains at the time of writing on ‘maximum alert’ against rising coronavirus infection rates. For De Bayser, the decision to press ahead with the fair – the city’s most prestigious platform for fine art and antiques – was taken in order to provide dealers with ‘a moment when things are easier to handle’; an instance of relative certainty in an uncertain world.
After the announcement last year that Connaissance des Arts magazine had become a major shareholder in Fine Arts Paris and its sister event, Salon du Dessin, the fair was due to scale up for its fourth edition this year, moving to a new home in the courtyard of the Dôme des Invalides on the Left Bank that was intended to accommodate some 65 exhibitors. With many of its international participants unable to make the trip, those plans have necessarily been shelved in favour of a more intimate, Parisian affair of around 40 galleries and dealerships at the Palais Brongniart. Twelve of those are taking part for the first time, including Oscar Graf, the expert in 19thcentury decorative arts, and Applicat-Prazan, which makes its debut with a fine abstract painting of 1956 by Pierre Soulages, among other works.
Despite the changes, visitors can expect to find the level of scholarship and the emphasis on museum-grade works at the fair refreshingly familiar. Perrin Fine Arts presents a newly rediscovered bust of Jules Breton by Jean Carriès (1881) – last seen publicly at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. Commissioned by the famous naturalist painter while Carriès was in his mid twenties, it evinces all the meticulous realism and delicacy of surface texture that characterises the sculptor’s best work. ‘Sculpture’ is also the theme of the fair’s off-site programme this year, which offers visitors special tours of some 20 museums across the city; highlights include a peek at the monumental statuary undergoing restoration in the Dôme des Invalides.
Among the Old Master and 19th-century paintings on view at the fair is an exquisite character study of an old man by the neoclassical painter Pierre Subleyras, presented by Eric Coatalem. Didier Aaron brings a lyrical early painting by Julius Exner, completed around the time of his studies under the Danish Golden Age master C.W. Eckersberg; it depicts a blooming tree, leaves dappled with bright sunlight, spied through an open window (Fig. 1).
De Bayser’s own gallery offers an exceptional pastel study of Juno that has been newly attributed to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (the work was long thought to be the work of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon), as well as some 40 studies of hands and heads by the little-known French realist artist Théodule-Augustin Ribot, priced to appeal to first-time buyers. ‘We want the fair to attract different kinds of audiences – from important collectors and museums to new collectors,’ De Bayser says. ‘It’s important for us to be able to build some momentum.’o
Fine Arts Paris takes place at the Palais Brongniart from 26–29 November (www.finearts-paris.com).