Offered for €210,000, Demon de la Sphere Terrestre (Demon of the Globe) sold to a private collection in Poland from the stand of Stuart Lochhead Sculpture.
Running from March 7-14, the fair hosted 272 exhibitors offering top examples of art, antiques and design.
Among the most notable successes were a string of seven-figure results.
German gallery Utermann sold Femme au tablier by Pablo Picasso for almost €2m to an American private collection, while Geneva’s Bailly Gallery parted with its stand highlight, Femme au Chapeau by Kees van Dongen, for a seven-figure sum to a private European collector.
During the fair’s early days Stuart Lochhead Sculpture placed Giambologna’s Striding Mars with a major American museum for $4m, while at the stand of Kunsthandel P de Boer a pair of pen paintings by Willem van de Velde the Elder went to a Dutch private collector for €3m.
Arms and armour specialist Peter Finer reported record sales including an important gilded Augsburg helmet purchased by a prominent New York collector for a seven-figure sum.
Peter Finer sold this close helmet for tournament attributable to Conrad Richter of Augsburg, c.1555 from the ‘Golden Garnitures’ of The Emperor Ferdinand I and his sons to a New York collector for a seven-figure sum.
Other highlights included a 16th century triptych of The Transfiguration of Christ by Belgian painter and sculptor Pieter Coecke Van Aelst which went to a private collector from the Netherlands for around €850,000.
Aronson Antiquairs found a new home for a blue and white Pyramidal Flower previously owned by British fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, sold for around €300,000.
São Roque parted with a Safavid 17th century mirror to the Aga Khan Foundation in Toronto for about €200,000.
Several stands enjoyed near sell-outs (Paulin Pavec, Ben Hunter and Lighthouse called Kanata).
Charles Beddington made more than 10 sales in the opening days alone including a work by Giovanni Battista Bertucci for €400,000 and The Piazza San Marco during the Feast of Saint Stephen by Francesco Guardi and Michele Marieschi which had an asking price of €450,000. According to Koopman Rare Art, which sold a set of eight salt cellars made for the Earl of Grosvenor by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell to a private collector for a price in the region £270,000, “clients were aggressively chasing the top objects”.
Those clients included 300 museum directors, 650 curators and 40 patron groups.
On the preview days, private collector attendance was up 20% year on year, said the organisers.
The results mentioned here come from details sanctioned by TEFAF, and these reports do not always paint a full picture of an event.
However, even in comparison with similar reports from other years, results from this edition of the historic fair suggest that, for some participants at least, it may have been the most robust Maastricht event since 2019.
A full report of TEFAF Maastricht will follow in a future issue of ATG.
