FINE ARTS PARIS – ONLINE

FINE ARTS PARIS 2020, Launches the FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE platform in lieu of the live November fair, cancelled following a government lockdown  order.

An oil painting by Gauguin, a previously unseen drawing by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrunanda sculpture by Germaine Richier are just a few of the major works to be found on the FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE platform

Fifty-five exhibitors, including 18 foreign galleries,  showed up to 10 works each, all of them previously vetted by experts.  

         François GÉRARD, dit BARON GÉRARD, (Rome 1770 – Paris 1837),
         Portrait de la comtesse Katarzyna Joanna Gabrielle Starzenska (1782-1862)
         Oil in Canvas H. 71,5 cm ; L. 43,3 cm ©Galerie Eric Coatalem – photo Th.Hennocque

A VIEWING ROOM TRUE TO THE DNA OF THE FINE ART PARIS FAIR

Following the announcement of a four-week lockdown in France and despite the determination of its organizers, Fine Arts Paris has been obliged to cancel its annual fair, which was to be held on November 26-29 at the Palais Brongniart. Fine Arts Week and the scholarly conference has also been cancelled. A virtual fair, FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE, will be held in its place.

FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE, a true showcase for the fair, remains faithful to its DNA by stressing quality and conviviality, with a focus on the artworks themselves and the connection with exhibitors.

On the platform, visitors are able to examine the 10 best pieces – previously vetted –being presented by each of the 50 participating galleries.The objects will be scroll randomly on the platform, offering visitors the pleasure of discovery, as if they were strolling through the fair in person. Users can also to click on an item, mark it as a favourite, find out more about it and contact the dealer offering it. They can also search by specialty, period, artists’ names or exhibitors’ names.

The organizers of FINE ARTS PARIS are aware that a virtual fair cannot replace the contacts made between gallery owners and collectors at a live event, but it is still a wonderful communications tool that allows new connections to be made.

Paul Gauguin
Teuraheimata
© Jill Newhouse – Masseyart

The American gallery Jill Newhouse, an exhibitor at FINE ARTS PARIS since its first edition,  presents an important painting by Paul Gauguin.

Never before exhibited publicly, Paul Gauguin’s  remarkable portrait Teuraheimata a Potoruof 1891 comes to the art market from an American private collection where it has been since 1943. Originally gifted by the artist to its first owner, Teuraheimata had previously been known only by a 1930s black and white photograph in the Wildenstein archives and its reproduction in the 1964 catalogue raisonné. The painting is being brought to the market now with new research, scholarship, and a conservation report and pigment analysis never previously available.

Teuraheimata a Potorucan now take its place in the small body of work of from Gauguin’s first Tahitian trip, which includes Vahine no te tiare (Woman of the Flower)(Copenhagen, NY Carlsberg Glypotek), and Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana’s Many Parents) in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956)Hanging lamp model M 997,1 prototype made for the Palais Stoclet, 45 pieces made based on the prototype1908Brass and glassH. 60 X W. 19 X D. 19 CMYVES ©MACAUX

The Brussels gallery Yves Macaux, a renowned specialist in Austrian decorative arts at the turn of the 20th century,  participates in FINE ARTS PARIS for the first time and will present historical works such as this glass and brass chandelier. A prototype, it was designed for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels in 1905 at the request of banker and collector Adolphe Stoclet by one of the leaders of the Vienna Secession movement, the architect Josef Hoffmann. It marks a radical change in Art Nouveau that heralds Art Deco and the modernist movement in architecture. The Palais Stoclet, one of the most successful examples of Viennese Secession architecture, has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 2009. This chandelier is the first version designed by Hoffmann; a number of copies of the final version now hang in the Palais Stoclet, including one in the Grand Salon.

Galerie Malaquais, which builds databases in collaboration with art historians, participates in only one art fair, FINE ARTS PARIS. The gallery will pay tribute to women sculptors by showing pieces by Germaine Richier, Camille Claudel, Jane Poupelet and Arlette Ginioux.

With La Regodias, Germaine Richier sculpted the face of a woman of her time, the professional model Renée Régodias. The bust depicts a haughty, elusive woman. At the time of the Richier retrospective at the Maeght Foundation in 1996, Jean-Louis Prat compared the work to the Nefertiti belonging to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. Richier was proud of La Regodias. It was one of the survivors of the 30 or 50 busts she produced before World War II; she destroyed those she was not satisfied with after the war. Made in Paris in 1938, the plaster La Regodias went with the sculptor into exile in Switzerland during the war. For an edition of 12, only two casts were made during the artist’s lifetime by Pastori. The example presented here, one of those two casts, comes from the collection of Swiss sculptor Hermann Hubacher (1885-1976) and is an exceptional example of the artist’s pre-war art.

Book of Hours (use of Paris)In Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on parchmentAngers or Le Mans (?), c. 1450-146014 large miniatures and 1 historiated initial by the Master of Charles du Maine
©LES ENLUMINURES

This important Book of Hours, one of Les Enluminures’ new acquisitions, will be shown at FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE. Newly discovered, it has a relatively large format and sheds light on the revival of French illumination in the aftermath of the Hundred Years’ War. It is the first known devotional manuscript illuminated by the important and rarely seen artist known as the Master of Charles of Maine.

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
The Artist and his Model (Le peintre et son modèle)
Pen and black ink and white chalk on light brown card. Dated 30.6.70. in black ink and signed Picasso in pencil at the upper left. Dated and numbered 30.6.70. / I in brush and black ink and white chalk on the reverse. 224 x 309 mm. (8 3/4 x 12 1/8 in.) ©Stephan ONGPIN / London

On the FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE platform, visitors can search by exhibitor, specialty, era or artists’ names. A search for “Picasso”, for instance, brings up several works, including a 1915 drawing, Le Moustachu, presented by the Galerie des Modernes, a fine example of the artist’s work during his “return to order” period. The London gallery Stephen Ongpinis showinga Picasso drawing, The Artist and His Model(1970). Found in large numbers of his paintings, drawings and engravings, this was one of the artist’s favourite subjects during the last two decades of his life. It perfectly illustrates the mechanisms of creation and the subtle links between the three main protagonists: the painter, the model and the canvas.

DE SOMME
(Active in Paris mid-17th century)
Still Life of a Ceramic Bowl filled with Peaches and Grapes Resting on a Surface Covered With Crimson Drapery; a Peach and a Grape Placed on the Left, Next to the Bottom of the Bowl
Oil on canvas – 53 x 62.5 cm
This painting by De Somme is a synthesis of what was produced by the best still life painters active in Paris in the 1650s. ©Didier AARON & Cie

The reappearance of this important painting presented by Didier Aaron & Ciegives the opportunity of turning the spotlight on a major still life painter, one whose modern historiography has been unable to reconstruct the catalogue. The recent discovery of a print by the artist was a decisive factor in the elaboration of this catalogue. It includes for the moment a dozen or so items, of which two paintings in French public collections, as well as the painting presented at FINE ARTS PARIS ONLINE. This painting by De Somme is a synthesis of what was produced by the best still life painters active in Paris in the 1650s.

Elisabeth VIGEE-LEBRUN (1755 -1842)JunonBlack chalk and pastel on once-blue paper, 41 x 33 cm. Annotated lower right: “PP Prudhon”Preparatory study for the figure of Juno for a painting,Juno Asking Venus to Lend Him Her Magic Belt,commissioned by the Count of Artois, painted in and exhibited at the 1781 Salon ©DE BAYSER

Civavonovonocomposite breastplate, made of sperm whale(physeter catodon) tooth and black lip pearl oyster (pinctada margaritifera) fixed with metal.Republic of the Fiji Islands, 19th Century.Dimensions: 19 cm ©Galerie Ondine & Patrick Mestdagh

This piece may be the ultimate prize for any collector of tribal adornments! Civavonovonowere breastplates worn by Fijian chiefs, important royal ornaments reserved for the highest strata of the Fijian hierarchy. This rare objectis being presented by the Brussels gallery Ondine & Patrick Mestdagh, which is participating for the first time in FINE ARTS PARIS as the fair opens its doors to non-Western art.

Jean-Baptiste Auguste dit Auguste CLÉSINGER, (1814-1883)BacchanteHeight 70cmMarble, partially tintedSigned on the front ribbon J. CLESINGERand inscribed on the back ribbon 2me ©ETUDESTUART LOCHHEAD

British gallerist Stuart Lochhead, who appreciatesthe quality of FINE ARTS PARIS and the direction it is taking, was delighted to take part in the fair’svirtual edition. An aficionado of 18th-and 19th-century French art, he will present several sculptures, including a marble bust by Auguste Clésinger, Bacchante, representing a companion of the god Bacchus, one of the artist’s favourite subjects.The virtuoso treatment of the marble and the texture of the hair, leaves and grapes, to which Clésinger applied wax or a lightly tinted varnish, gives the marble an aged look. Its combination of sensuality and melancholy is typical of the artist’s work. The model for the bust is thought to be Apollonie Sabatier, a painter for whom Baudelaire (among others) long held a secret passion.

HANS HARTUNG (1904-1989)
T1958-8
Oil on canvas – 41×27 cm
Signed and dated lower right
This work will be included in the forthcomingCatalogue Raisonné
of the artist’s work being prepared by the Hans
Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman Foundation
©APPLICAT PRAZAN

The gallery APPLICAT PRAZAN, which is participating in FINE ARTS PARIS for the first time, is showing works by Georges Mathieu, Zao Wou-Ki, Serge Charchoune, Martin Barré, Jean-Michel Atlan and Hans Hartung. Hartung, one of the foremost painters of the Paris New School, was born in Germany but lived most of his life in France. His timeless, universal works have been well-received on the market for several years now and were the subject of a major retrospective that opened a year ago at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Philippe HIQUILY (1925-2013)
Dédoublement de la prostituée – 1953 – Iron, engine chimney
H 194 X 96 cm
Unique piece
Provenance : Galerie Claude Bernard
©Galerie JEAN-MARC LELOUCH