The European Fine Art Fair (Tefaf) opened its first edition in New York to VIPs on Friday—including CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, who quickly snapped up a Portrait of Mariana de Silva y Sarmiento, Duquesa de Huescar by Anton Raphael Mengs from New York Old Master dealer Otto Naumann for $275,000. The fair, which opens to the public today and runs until Wednesday 26 October, brings together 94 international exhibitors in the Park Avenue Armory. Here is our selection of stands you cannot miss:
Les Enluminures, the Medieval specialist dealer based in New York, Paris and Chicago, has brought a selection of fine manuscripts and finger-rings, including an 18th-century Jewish wedding ring and an ancient Egyptian ring that depicts a cat and her kittens (around sixth-first century BC) (prices range from $8,500 to $150,000). One highlight of the booth is an illuminated Perugian Book of Hours (around 1450-1475) ($525,000) with provenance tracing it back the late English collector and bibliophile Charles William Dyson Perrins. The book, written in Latin, includes four full-page miniatures, and is attributed to the artist Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone.
The London-based dealer Ronald Phillips, who focuses on 18th- and 19th-century English furniture, has two antique tables (1803-1806) (more than £500,000) that were commissioned by George Granville Leveson-Gower, the marquess of Stafford from 1803 to 1833 and the first duke the Bridgwater House (then known as the Cleveland House) in Westminster from 1758 to 1786. The porphyry dolphin tables, which have a pink granite top, are believed to have been part of a set of more than 12, and belonged in a picture gallery at the aristocrat’s home.
Marking the Chinese jewellery designer’s first participation in Tefaf, Wallace Chan is showing 40 pieces—including necklaces, pendants, brooches and rings—as well as a 2.2m-high titanium-gemstone sculpture titled the Rise of Heart, which greets visitors as they enter the fair. One highlight of the booth is a brooch (around $7m) that depicts the Hindu deity Apsara, who is celebrated by various Asian cultures. The work, which took three years to design and was finished in 2016, comprises crystal, emerald, gold, and yellow, pink and green diamonds.
A museum-quality ancient Egyptian granodiorite portrait of the Pharaoh Amenhotep II (around 1427-1401 BC) ($2.1m) is being offered at Daniel Katz, the London-based dealer who usually shows Old Master sculptures and fine antiques. The nearly six-inch-tall sculpture, which uncommonly avoided iconoclasts and has its nose intact, was acquired before 1981 by the French collectors André and Zeineb Levy-Despas. It was sold at Christie’s in Paris earlier this year for €661,500.
The London-based dealer Peter Finer, who specialises in antique arms, armour and related items, has brought a selection of weapons including an engraved glaive made for the guard of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian II (1564) and a steel, silver and wooden pistol bearing the British Royal Crown (around 1770-3). A highlight of the booth is a pair of bronze cannons (1747) ($630,000) that were given by King George III for the general John Graves Simcoe that feature ornamental foliage and the engraving ‘Violati Fulmina Regis’ (Thunderbolts of an Outraged King). The cannons previously sold at Christie’s in 2005 for £90,000.
De Jonckheere, the Parisian dealer of Old Master works, is presenting a replica (dated around 1500) of the left- and right-hand panels from The Temptation of St Anthony, a triptych by the Flemish master Hieronymous Bosch that is kept at the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon. The diptych (priced at $1.4m) is among six of the 20 known replicas of the altarpiece, believed to have been painted by the same artist, who likely had direct access to Bosch’s work. Although very similar to the original, the replicas differ in size and the artist has reinterpreted the scene by removing certain elements and adding others, such as an untamed fire that bursts from the surrounding mountains. The work comes from a private French collection.
