Intro to Art Fairs with Aimee Marcereau DeGalan

Buying art can be a daunting experience. How and where do you start? Thankfully, there are fine arts fairs offered many times throughout the year aimed with presenting the best examples of art from dealers around the world. These fairs offer works that are vetted for their quality, authenticity, and condition by experts in the field. Presently, we are gearing up for TEFAF (The European Fine Arts Fair), held annually in Maastricht every March. For two weeks curators, collectors and connoisseurs of art from Europe and America descend upon this small town in the southeast of the Netherlands to see and possibly acquire the works on offer.

This year we are excited to see at TEFAF a lovely painting of a pair of cherubs sitting on a cloud by 17th century Italian artist Guercino (1591-1666) painted in 1653. Many scholars believe Guercino painted this particular canvas to go over his painting of St. Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin from 1652-53, that is at the Nelson-Atkins. Both works were in the collection of the Earls Spencer at Althrop, Northamptonshire in the 1700s, but became separated at some point when they were sold and have not been together since. We think it would be an amazing opportunity to bring them together again after all this time.

Painted exactly 100 years later in 1753, another item we are keen to see to see is a very fine and previously unpublished portrait by Pompeo Batoni of Englishman Edward Solly. Batoni was the master at capturing the character and finery of his sitters, many of whom, like Solly, went on the Grand Tour, that coming-of-age trip to Europe undertaken by young European men of sufficient means and rank. Batoni’s portraits from the 1750s reveal the intensity of the artist’s efforts to establish himself as a portrait painter in Rome from their carefully delineated features of his sitters to their crisp, vivid colored costumes. A work by Batoni would anchor our Grand Tour gallery.

Images: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino, Italian, 1591-1666, Two Cherubs on a Cloud (detail). Oil on canvas, 18 ½ x 23 13/16 inches. Offered by Fondantico. Pompeo Batoni, Italian (1708-1787), Portrait of Edward Solly, (detail) 1753. Oil on canvas, 39 x 29 inches. Offered by Simon Dickinson.