Sales Were Slow and Steady at TEFAF Maastricht—But Hidden Gems Gave the Fair Real Energy

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Since last week, in Maastricht, a Dutch university city about two hours outside Amsterdam, 266 galleries have been exhibiting at this year’s edition of TEFAF, one of two fairs run by the European Fine Art Fair foundation, which focuses on selling and preserving works by Old Masters and antiquities.

This year, the fair reported roughly the same volume of painting sales as it did in the first days of last year’s edition. The highest price was achieved by Flemish artist Michael Sweerts’s $3.8 million painting The Virgin at Prayer (ca. 1650s), which went to a Dutch foundation. Last year, the most expensive painting sold, by a Dutch artist, went for a slightly higher sum of $4 million. However, according to a fair spokesperson, this year’s fair saw more mid-tier sales exceeding $1.09 million and more institutional acquisitions than the year prior. All of the sales between $544,000 and $4.35 million that the fair reported last week were for paintings by Italian and Dutch artists.

(The fair also shows contemporary work, though that’s less of a focus.)

Will Korner, TEFAF’s UK-based head of fairs, told ARTnews that the pace of big sales at TEFAF is slower than that of other similar fairs because much of TEFAF’s audience tends to be museum trustees.

“We’re both a foundation and a sales platform. It’s not only about sales,” said Korner, who explained that it isn’t until galleries apply in June for the following year’s fair that TEFAF gets a real sense of how each performed. “Contemporary sales happen more swiftly, but it’s not the same measure of success for us.”

Still, as TEFAF Maastricht’s new director, Dominique Savelkoul, explained during a press dinner on Friday evening, the fair is trying to lure younger exhibitors and collectors in an effort to grow its attendance. 

One way to get an early measure of the fair’s success is seeing which US museums make the voyage to Maastricht. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago were just two of the institutions to attend this year, with each staging competing dinners where sales talk continued over the meal.

Of the seven-figure works on offer, only two were reported sold by the end of the weekend (the fair runs until Thursday). In addition to the Sweerts work, the Dutch gallery Bijl-Van Urk Masterpaintings sold Alfred Cuyp’s A Landscape with Riders on a Path (ca.1650s) to the Kremer Collection for over $1 million.

The London-based Old Masters gallery Trinity Fine Art has two seven-figure works that remained unsold by the end of the weekend. One is a painting by a little-known Italian Mannerist named Mirabello Cavalori; it’s an allegory about friendship that shows a lone male figure pulling back flesh to reveal an exposed heart emblazoned with the Latin for “Near and Far.” That work was priced at $1.2 million.

“People take their time making acquisitions here,” a Trinity representative told ARTnews at the gallery’s booth on opening day. “A lot of them are collecting for potential museum donations.”

Meanwhile, Dutch adviser Marc-Jan van Laake told ARTnews that smaller but established European dealers closely watch which of their artists make it into big US gallery shows—and adjust the prices for TEFAF accordingly. Such was the case with 20th-century Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert, whose work is currently being shown by David Zwirner in New York. The show, the artist’s first in that city in around 50 years, according to van Laake, elevates the work to an entirely different financial echelon

“Everybody in Europe is on their toes—he was always a kind of hidden gem in Belgium. Now, our hidden gem is discovered,” said van Laake, who noted that prices for Spilliaert in New York could reach $250,000 to $1.5 million for drawings. “That is unheard of in Europe. It’s a whole different ball game [in New York], money-wise.” 

David Levy, a gallerist who operates in Brussels and Paris, was showing a 1907 self-portrait by Spilliaert at the fair. He told ARTnews that he is in talks with a US museum interested in buying the work, though he declined to disclose which institution or which price it was being sold for.

Korner said buying activity from representatives hailing from a small set of countries makes things more competitive year to year, Korner added. Collectors coming from the Netherlands are most common at TEFAF Maastricht, second to Germany and the US. “I’m tired of hearing from gallerists that Americans haven’t been seen in Europe for a while,” he added. 

Marianne Boesky, a New York dealer who came to Maastricht for the first time this year, brought a particularly American flavor with paintings by Danielle Mckinney, who depicts Black women lounging in domestic spaces. Mckinney’s works, which have historically sold to US museums and collectors, were shown beside drawings by Edward Hopper. Boesky said there was already a long wait list of private collectors for Mckinney’s works, which sold at prices between $70,000 to $120,000. (The whole booth was sold before the fair began, Boesky reported.)

Americans are key to success at TEFAF Maastricht, dealers said. “People wake up when American museums are interested,” van Laake noted.