The opening vernissage of this 5th edition of the fair attracted 2800 visitors and sales took place from the outset, a selection of which are featured here.
Galerie Sismann from Paris sold three major works including a French stone Vierge de l’Annonciation of c.1500 from the Languedoc-Roussillon school priced between €150,000-200,000 and a 19th century marble of Silenus carrying the infant Dionysus which went to a French collector.
Four pieces were sold to major international collectors by the Paris Galerie G Sarti which specialises in early Italian paintings, among them a triptych in tempera and gold by Simoni dei Crocifissi of c.1355-60.
Other sales in the field of Old Masters included Le voeu de Louis XIII, an oil on canvas by Carle van Loo priced around €100,000 by the Galerie Didier Aaron from Paris. This was a preparatory work for the main altarpiece at Notre Dame des Victories.
Sales among the exhibitors of Modern art included around eight works at the Galerie de la Présidence from Paris such as a gouache from 1972 by Sonia Delaunay and several works by Geer van Velde, while the Galerie Orsay Paris found buyers for about half the works on its stand.
Sculpture highlights
The specialist sculpture gallery Univers du Bronze from Paris sold over 10 pieces including a set of eight patinated plaster profile portrait medallions created by Auguste Préault for the Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1863, which went to a French museum, and two terracottas by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: an initial project for the Opera Garnier and a Mater Delorosa priced at €60,000.
A French museum acquired Giacomo Ginotti’s bronze La Pétroleuse Vaincue of 1887, a work inspired by political events of the Paris Commune, from new exhibitor Enrico Frascione from Florence.
Among the new disciplines at Fine Arts Paris this year was non-European ethnographic art represented by the Galerie Patrick & Ondine Mesdagh from Brussels which sold over 10 works including the Maori nephrite Hei Tiki pendant previewed in ATG No 2515.
