The Swiss picture offered by John Mitchell Fine Paintings sold to a European private collector for £75,000, while a Caspar Wolf painting from the same gallery went to the Fondation Custodia – Frits Lugt Collection in Paris.
The dealership joined around 50 businesses taking part in the biennial event, which ran from June 27-July 2 and is a chance for art traders around Mayfair and St James’s to showcase some of their best stock in dedicated locations.
Exhibitions spanning subjects from Baroque sculpture and painting at Callisto Fine Arts to The Lost Tapestries of Charles I at S Franses attracted curators and private collectors. John Mitchell, which staged From Fjord to Forest at its Avery Row premises, also exhibited at Masterpiece London, one of a few to commit to two high-season events.
Home turf
Many dealers such as Mayfair’s Andrew Clayton-Payne held shows on their home turf. He sold a third of his collection of recently rediscovered Johan Zoffany drawings to institutions as well as private clients (see ATG No 2400).
In St James’s, five 19th century drawings of Guam at Martyn Gregory Gallery went to a new private collector, while British works on paper dealer Guy Peppiatt sold more than half of his collection of drawings by Edwin Landseer. Bagshawe Fine Art parted with a moonlit scene of Mount Vesuvius by Joseph Wright of Derby.
With 13 dealerships coming in from abroad, and others from farther afield in the UK, several participants set up in shared or rented space. Ambrose Naumann Fine Art from New York, for example, joined the Tomasso Bros in its St James’s gallery for the show Lines of Time.
Paolo Antonacci Roma sold this oil on canvas, Elegant figures admiring the ruins of Tintern Abbey, for a five-figure sum.
First-time participant Paolo Antonacci Roma, meanwhile, set up on Bury Street where he welcomed a stream of visitors, including a German collector who snapped up an English school oil on canvas of Tintern Abbey for a five-figure sum.
Among the museums in attendance were the British Museum, the Ashmolean and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and from the US the Getty, the Met and the National Gallery of Art.
LAW chairman Stephen Ongpin reported around 600 visitors by the Thursday of the event.
“LAW is always a wonderful opportunity for us to have the time to speak with visiting curators and clients in the comfort of our own gallery, with more time to dedicate to each visitor which is not always possible at a fair,” he added.
