Canopic Vase, Naples 1830 (Steinitz)

Definite slowdown

At TEFAF Maastricht, which brings together 271 galleries from 21 countries from March 15 to 20, 2025, dealers readily admit: The market is experiencing a definite slowdown, outside of truly exceptional pieces. And so, they are making a real effort.

Hidde van Seggelen

The president of the event, Hidde van Seggelen, is attempting to stoke conversation with the reminder that the last “F” in TEFAF stands for “Foundation” (The European Fine Art Foundation), which has educational objectives aimed among other things, at attracting a younger audience (See here an other interview of Hidde van Seggelen). But more generally, across the 7,000 years of art history on display at what is undoubtedly the best antiques fair in the world, the highlights, as every year, remain the Old and Modern Masters.

Pablo Picasso (Landau Fine arts)

Gustav Klimt discovery

The Vienna-based W&K Gallery has thus brought its major discovery to this year’s fair. It is a painting by Austria’s Modern art celebrity, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). The gallery’s co-founder, Lui Wienerroither, recounts that a couple walked into their space, about one and a half year ago,  holding a painting whose surface was dulled by years of grime. A gallery employee initially dismissed it, but one of the partners caught up with the couple outside. And rightly so.

Prince William Nii Nortay Dowuona

Gustav Klimt

Beneath the dirt lay the stamp of Gustav Klimt’s estate, affixed to the canvas during a 1923 auction following the master’s death. As confirmed later by Klimt’s catalogue raisonné author, Alfred Weidinger, it is a work whose trace had been lost. It portrays, in 1897, Prince William Nii Nortay Dowuona—a handsome Black man seen in profile—who belonged to the Ashanti people of Ghana. He had traveled to Vienna as part of one of the infamous human zoos that Europe specialized in at the time (See here the report about “The black model” at Musée d’Orsay)

15 million euros

The painting was looted during the war and wrongfully remained in the same family since the 1950s. It is now on offer for 15 million euros—a modest sum compared to Klimt’s auction record (108.7 million euros) but a significant amount considering that the work is relatively academic, lacking the opulent ornamentation that defines Klimt’s late style. For comparison, in 2017, another of his rather classical portraits, “Young Girl in the Greenery” (1896), sold for 5.3 million dollars. But rediscovering a Klimt is always an event.

Alice Landau

The Landau Gallery from Montreal consistently brings staggeringly priced works to Maastricht. This year, it’s a large-format Picasso from 1965, available for 50 million euros. At the same booth is a 2.4-meter-high bronze by British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), depicting one of his favorite themes, “Mother and Child,” priced at 7.5 million euros.

Henry Moore

Fresh moss

At some booths, the fair feels like a museum where everything is for sale. One shouldn’t miss the fabulous offerings of the Flore Gallery from Brussels. Its director, Amaury de la Moussaye, has envisioned a space entirely covered in fresh moss, within which he has crafted small grottoes housing eighteen examples of ceramics formerly known as “Palissy ware,” named after the Renaissance ceramicist Bernard Palissy.

Palissy ceramic

Archaeological discoveries in the late 20th century revealed that these highly sophisticated relief ceramics created between 1600 and 1650—with their intricate lace-like designs and vibrant polychrome glazing requiring great expertise—were not all made by the hand of Palissy himself. It took the Belgian dealer two and a half years to authenticate and assemble this collection (priced between 30,000 and 70,000 euros per piece). The Louvre possesses a colossal collection its own.

Early Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

As is tradition, each year TEFAF presents a painting by a Dutch art icon. This year, it’s a Vincent van Gogh. At the booth of the New Orleans M.S. Rau Gallery, a significant early painting by the artist is prominently displayed. Created in 1884, while he was still in his native Netherlands, this still life—less somber than his usual works from that period—depicts, in some senses, the artist’s obsessions: a bottle of alcohol, tobacco and a mirror (for sale at 4.4 million euros). (See here a report about an exhibition dedicated to the last Van Gogh at Auvers sur Oise)

As with the aforementioned Klimt, this is not the most sought-after phase of the artist with the severed ear. In 2023, a small portrait of a woman, dark and rustic, made a year later fetched 5.8 million dollars. The TEFAF painting comes directly from a private American collection, according to Rebecca Rau.

Frans Hals

Van Gogh had a deep admiration for one of his Dutch predecessors, Frans Hals (1580-1666), about whom he wrote to his brother Theo in 1885: “This master par excellence has fifty shades of black.” In Maastricht, the booth of one of New York’s rare major Old Masters dealers, Adam Williams, features a portrait by this giant of the Dutch Golden Age.

50 shades of black

It depicts a brewer, Johan Claesz Loo, whom Hals also painted twice in monumental representations of Haarlem’s guild of the civic guards. Here, however, it’s not the subject that matters but the breathtaking technique—the sketch-like rendering of forms and the ability to express subtle shades of darkness (priced at around 5.7 million euros). Patrick Williams, the gallery’s young director, hopes to sell this painting, long held in an English collection, to an American museum.

Frans Hals

Salomon Lilian

The theme of beer in Haarlem seems to have been widely explored in painting. Dutch dealer Salomon Lilian presents a composition by Jan van de Velde III (1620-1662), known during the Dutch Golden Age for his still lifes. Here, he depicts elements associated with beer, including a jug. Coincidentally, Lilian already owned the actual earthenware vessel featured in the painting. He is offering the painting and the jug together for 950,000 euros—again dreaming of an American museum eager to acquire these inseparable items.

James Ensor and a crucifixion

Another fascinating aspect of TEFAF is the thoughtful curation of the booths.

The Kunstkammer Georg Laue Gallery from Munich has strategically placed a painting by the Belgian artist much-admired by the Surrealists, James Ensor (1890–1949), depicting “Christ in Agony” amid a colorful crowd (for sale at 1.2 million euros), next to a hyper-realistic Tuscan crucifixion in polychrome wood from around 1380 (priced at 125,000 euros). This anachronistic juxtaposition makes the latter—typically seen as a non-commercial subject—more appealing.

Dickinson gallery

Finally, among the most intriguing paintings at this 2025 edition is a small panel displayed at the booth of London’s Dickinson Gallery. The upper portion features a portrait of a man, curiously set in a horizontal format. Below, turbulent waves engulfing ships seem to crash into his face. Specialists believe it was created by two little-known Dutch Golden Age artists, Isaack Luttichuys (1616-1776) and Ludolf Backhuysen (1630-1708). An unprecedented collaboration which may depict the fatal shipwreck of the portrait’s subject. But nothing is certain.

Isaak Luttichuys, Ludolf Backhuysen

It is such captivating examples of art history that make these testaments to human genius all the more alluring.

March 15-20. www.tefaf.com/fairs/tefaf-maastri