TEFAF New York Fall’s Second Edition Opens With Stellar Attendance and Robust Sales

October 29, 2017 (New York, NY)– The second edition of TEFAF New York Fall opened to the public on Saturday, October 28, 2017, following a packed preview day on Friday, October 27, at the historic Park Avenue Armory to vigorous sales across a wide range of categories and significant dealers. Leading members of the international art collecting community and institutional representatives worldwide visited the Fair in its first two days, acquiring works for both private and public collections.  

This year’s Fair, which runs through Wednesday, November 1, features 95 of the world’s preeminent art and antiques dealers and presents museum-quality fine and decorative art from antiquity to 1920 under the roof of the Armory’s Drill Hall. In addition to the returning dealers, the Fair welcomed 12 new participants representing a range of periods and genres. Sales were reported throughout the Fair, from the opening minutes until the Fair closed at 9pm.

Notable attendees have included actress, comedian, author, and television host Whoopi Goldberg; television personality, writer, and businesswoman Martha Stewart; journalist, author and collector Anderson Cooperand partner Benjamin Maisani; fashion designer Tory Burch; United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross; philanthropist, fashion icon, and social activist Deeda Blair; Jo Carole Lauder, wife of art collector, philanthropist, activist and Neue Galerie co-founder Ronald S. Lauder; New York socialite and collector Irene Roosevelt Aitken; investor, documentary filmmaker, philanthropist and art collector Anne Hendricks Bass; acclaimed interior designer Jamie Drakeof Drake/Anderson; Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder of online fashion retailer Moda Operandi; and philanthropist and collector Estrellita Brodsky, among others.  

From the academic community, leadership from across the globe, including from Americans for the Arts (New York); Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York); Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA); Cleveland Museum of Art; Delaware Art Museum; Detroit Institute of Arts; Des Moines Art Center; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC); Hispanic Society of America (New York); Kimbell Art Museum (Houston, TX); Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna, Austria); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mexican Cultural Institute (New York); Minneapolis Institute of Art; National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); Palazzo Strozzi Foundation USA (New York); Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); Studio Museum in Harlem (New York); The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia, PA); The Frick Collection (New York); The Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); The Morgan Library & Museum (New York); and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); among other institutions, were also in attendance.

Only moments after the doors of the Armory opened, several important works were sold—a trend that continued throughout the first two days. Highlights include:  

• A tapestry depicting the Ball Game from the story of Gombaut and Macée (Flemish, Bruges, ca. 1600-35), sold by Mullany (UK, stand 92), London specialists in haute époque fine art, to the Musea Brugge, for an undisclosed sum.  
• Vanitas, a magnificent example of Baroque painting by Spanish master Andrés de Leito (documented, Segovia and Madrid, between 1656 and 1663) from Colnaghi (UK; Spain, stand 7), attracted the attention of a museum within the Fair’s first hour, with an asking price of seven figures. This painting, previously unpublished, is a magnificent addition to the small but extraordinary group of works of this type by the enigmatic artist, widely recognized as some of the most beautiful works created in 17th-century Madrid. Previously, only four paintings by de Leito on the theme were known.  
• George Minne’s (1866-1941) Head of a Man (Flemish, Ghent, ca. 1910-13), sold by Agnews (UK, stand 25). It is a significant example of the artist’s changing style at the turn of the 20th century. This bust depicts Eduard Lacaege, a worker from the docks, who served as a model for five of Minne’s works at the time. The frontal orientation of Eduard is of the highest quality, and the only portrait recorded in white marble, with exquisite attention to the musculature, veins, bones and folds of the skin – which the artist studied in great detail at the University of Ghent.  
• Svend Hammershøi’s (1873-1948) View of Nørregade, Copenhagen (Danish, 1926), sold by Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc. (USA, stand 77). While Hammershøi is perhaps best known as a ceramicist and designer, he was also an accomplished painter, and focused heavily on the interplay between nature and architecture—as well as the dim twilight of Scandinavian winter—of which this work is an important example.  
• Edwin Lord Weeks’s (1849-1903) Across the Pool to the Golden Temple of Amritsar (American, ca. 1882-3), sold by Taylor | Graham (USA, stand 85). In this work, Weeks, one of the most important American Orientalist painters of the 19th century, presents a striking study in light, architecture, and culture, undoubtedly influenced by the artist’s second trip to India in 1886-7, during which he visited Amritsar, the holiest Sikh temple. Weeks later painted another version of the temple, ca. 1890, which is housed in the collection of Brown University.  
• A Burlwood ‘Grandfather-Grandson’ Sculpture, from China’s Ming-Qing Dynasty (ruled 1644-1912), sold byMaria Kiang Chinese Art (Hong Kong, stand 44), a new exhibitor to TEFAF New York Fall.  
• An English Victorian brooch (1870), with diamonds set in silver and gold, sold by A La Vieille Russie, (USA, stand 84), specialists in antique jewelry, Russian works of art, gold boxes, and vertu.