Fine Art Fair Freshens Up With More Abstract And American Art

NEW YORK CITY

:For the second consecutive year, Haughton International Fairs and The Frick Collection joined forces to present the International Fine Art Fair, at New York's Seventh Regiment Armory from May 11 through May 17.

As an artistic pairing, the partnership could not be better. At 1 East 70th Street in New York, the high-style mansion built by Carrere & Hastings in 1914 for industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) houses a small but impressive collection of masterpiece paintings.

Similarly, the International Fine Art Fair is an intimate, dignified setting for traditional painting and some sculpture. The show's content and roster have changed over time, but Anna and Brian Haughton's jewel box has proven to be an adaptable one. Now in its thirteenth year, the fair is aging well.

Five hundred fifty people attended an opening night party on Thursday, May 11, raising $225,000 for the Frick's special exhibitions program. Spotted in the crowd were former Disney chief and collector Michael Eisner; Richard Oldenburg, director emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art; young socialites Marina Rust Connor, Lauren Dupont and Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer as well as social doyenne Deda Blair; and assorted Frick descendants and staff.

Touring the show on Saturday, Oprah Winfrey fancied bronze animalier at London's Sladmore Gallery, which sold Rembrandt Bugatti's "Walking Puma" to an American collector for around $400,000. An erudite presentation like the International Fine Art Fair depends on the support of professional collectors, who came from more than 75 museums.

Old Master pictures and French paintings are the fair's bread and butter. This year, there were Picassos and a Matisse at E&R Cyzer and Galerie Cazeau-Beraudiere; a Sisley at David Findlay Jr Fine Art; a Vuillard at Neffe-Degandt, which, sharing a booth with Old Masters drawings specialist Jill Newhouse, sold two Bonnard oils, one for about $450,000; the other, for more than $1.5 million.

At Avery Gallery, Mary Cassatt's "Head of a Girl," a circa 1909 pastel on paper on canvas, was $495,000. Gallerie du Post-Impressionisme of Paris offered Paul Signac's 1885 oil on canvas depiction of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame, "Quai de la Tournelle." Leger and Dubuffet reigned at Galerie Fabien Boulakia, Paris, where a captivating Emile Bernard café scene echoed the psychological realism of Toulouse-Lautrec. Peter Findlay Gallery of New York sold a Degas bronze of dancer of circa 1920 for more than $600,000.

"History pictures are my specialty. Museums represent a significant part of my clientele," said Jack Kilgore. On opening night, the New York dealer, who also shows at Palm Beach! and Maastricht, sold an arresting double portrait of 1626 by Antwerp-born Cornelius de Wael of himself with his brother Lucas de Wael, also a painter and an apprentice to their famous uncle, Jan Bruegel the Elder. It went to a museum buyer for around $165,000.

"The Sacrifice of Noah" by Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was another major sale in the Old Masters category. Colnaghi/Katrin Bellinger offered the large, colorful gouache for about $200,000.

"The American market is a good one for us," said Florentine dealer Fabrizio Moretti, a fifth-year exhibitor whose front-row display of Italian Old Master pictures included an oil on canvas view of Venice's Grand Canal by Canaletto (1697-1768). The $13.5 million painting was formerly in the Wrightsman collection.

Across the aisle was Agnew's, the Old Bond Street gallery founded in 1817. Exemplifying this firm's grand tradition was "The Triumph of David" by Domenico Tintoretto, but Sir Stanley Spencer's realist painting of the 1930s, "The Beatitudes of Love," signaled a new direction for both Agnew's and the fair.

With no date restrictions imposed by its organizers, the International Fine Art Fair is slowly introducing art of the mid to late Twentieth Century. More abstract painting has refreshed and updated the presentation, no where more so than at Richard Green, the conservative London dealer better known for French Impressionism.

Along with pieces by Boudin and Pissarro, Green also showcased "Midsummer," $750,000, by British Op Art artist Bridget Riley, and "Blue Round Corner," a Diebenkorn-like work of 1961 by St Ives painter Peter Lanyon.

A dozen specialists in American art, many of them fresh to the fair, are remaking it a magnet for collectors in this field. Returning exhibitor Thomas Colville emphasized Hudson River School painting. His showstopper was James M. Hart's monumental canvas, "Morning In The Adirondacks," exhibited at the 1864 Sanitary Fair alongside Church's "Heart of The Andes." The New York and New Haven dealer sold five paintings by fair's end, including a Kensett.

Nearby at Questroyal were complementary Nineteenth Century canvases, including "Snow in the Rockies" by Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church's "Sunset on Catskill Lake."

Jennifer Krieger, who left Questroyal to start Hawthorne Fine Art, wrote up a Martin Johnson Heade still life, "Cherokee Roses in a Glass," for $1.1 million.

Owen Gallery parted with Maurice Prendergast's "Deer Park," which went to a private buyer for more than $1 million.

New exhibitor Debra Force featured "The 79th Street Boat Basin" of 1935 by Anthony Thieme. The dappled view across the Hudson toward New Jersey was $185,000.

In an angular, white booth reminiscent of Mackintosh's Glasgow School design, Bernard Goldberg showcased George Bellows' sparkling Rhode Island ocean view, "Paradise Point," of 1919.

Gerald Peters, whose large Santa Fe gallery anchors Canyon Road, featured paintings by two of New Mexico's best known artists. A Georgia O'Keeffe watercolor of Ghost Ranch, near her home in Abiquiu, was $385,000. Agnes Martin, who died in Taos in 2004, was represented by "The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden," an oil on canvas of 1953, price on request.

Tom Veilleux Gallery of Farmington, Maine, combined views of Atlantic Canada by Rockwell Kent with bronzes by Maine artist William Zorach. Hollis Taggart pushed the envelope with midcentury modern works by Riopelle, Baziotes and Roy Lichtenstein.

The most dramatic sculpture was "Brass in The Sky," a large mobile made by Alexander Calder in 1947 for the Chicago department store Marshall Field. The monumental brass composition hung from the ceiling at French & Co., a century-old firm once better known for the tapestries it sold William Randolph Hearst for San Simeon.

Before they recess for the summer, the Haughtons return to London for the 25th anniversary of their first show, the International Ceramics Fair & Seminar, June 15-18.