Netherlands

TEFAF have revealed the list of 270 exhibitors standing at the next Maastricht fair in March.

A handwritten poem by Anne Frank has sold at auction in the Netherlands at €140,000 (£119,000).

The Dutch buyer of ‘the most valuable Second World War battle flag ever sold’ has loaned it to the National Military Museum in Soesterberg, the Netherlands.

Eric Bijzet has become the latest expert to leave Sotheby’s as he plans to set up on his own as a dealer back home in Amsterdam.

The 29th staging of TEFAF Maastricht will go down as a good edition of the fair with dealers reporting decent sales overall and the changes made for this year’s event meeting general approval among the standholders.

ATG reporter Frances Allitt took her first trip to TEFAF Maastricht and, as well as witnessing the colour, excitement and love for art and objects that pervade the fair, she also learned some valuable lessons from dealers and visitors.

With the preview of TEFAF 2016 now underway, ATG gives you a snapshot around the stands of the fair.

Six paintings consigned to Gorringes of Lewes, East Sussex, have been returned to the Amsterdam Museum after being identified as those stolen from the Dutch institution over 40 years ago.

Visitors to ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ 2015 will be greeted by a revamped entrance to the fair alongside a new ‘curated space’ of work by post-Modern and contemporary artists to tie in with the ‘TEFAF Modern section’.

Bright spring sunshine greeted the opening of this year’s TEFAF Maastricht in sharp contrast to last year when freak snowfall disrupted many visitors’ travel plans to the southern Netherlands.

Christie’s has announced a major consignment of Old Master drawings which will be offered over the next two years in a series of sales in London, Amsterdam and Paris.

Christie’s are scaling down their Dutch operation with substantially fewer staff and a pared-down sales schedule designed to reflect the international auction calendar.

Showing up at TEFAF Maastricht in the southern Netherlands with a stand cobbled together from stale, lacklustre stock is tantamount to professional suicide, the sort of nightmare that has dealers waking up in a cold sweat.

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has acquired an important collection of letters, photos and documents relating to Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank.

ATG Media, parent company of Antiques Trade Gazette has been named as one of the Top 100 companies in Europe in the Red Herring Awards, which celebrate innovation and technology in business.

IT may sound a little gimmicky, but one of the most captivating TEFAF exhibits this year was an animated version of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s Vase With Flowers in a Window by the contemporary artists Rob and Nick Carter on the stand of London’s Fine Art Society.

THE incomparable TEFAF Maastricht opened to the usual streams of visitors at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre but, unusually for the Dutch fair, an early big ticket sale came for a British picture.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

IF the mood at the opening of the TEFAF Maastricht fair on March 11 was tempered with a note of caution, this was dramatically heightened after a power cut plunged the halls into complete darkness just as the vernissage was getting underway.