A Very British Event, New for 2006
Pippa Robertson
At a time when many think the only art market is contemporary, a new fine art and antiques fair with a traditional bend is to be launched in May at the Royal Academy Rooms, Burlington Gardens, London.
LAPADA at the Royal Academy is organised under the auspices of the UK’s largest trade association for professional dealers in art and antiques (LAPADA). This new fair will feature more than 70 leading dealers, all members of the association.
Whilst there are no datelines for this new event, the majority of exhibitors will be of the traditional sector. Art for sale at the fair will be of interest to international collectors, with examples from all periods: Antiquity to Medieval, Old Master to Post-Impressionist. Modern and contemporary works, mostly of a figurative nature, will also be offered and will compliment the traditional aspect.
Some of the UK’s leading dealers in 19th Century art, such as Oakham Galleries in St. James’s, London, Simon Wingett Fine Art in Wales, Haynes Fine Art of Broadway in Gloucestershire, the Bourne Gallery in Surrey and Callaghan Fine Paintings in Shropshire, will bring to the fair some of the finest examples of British and European art of the Victorian age.
Lovers of marine art will enjoy a dramatic view of Gibraltar by Danish artist Wilhelm Melbye. In View of Gibraltar with the Atlas Mountains beyond, signed and dated 1880, Wilhelm’s technique is clearly influenced by his master, celebrated marine painter Theodore Gudin, especially in his use of light and in his evocative depiction of the sky. As such, the present view stands as one of the finest examples of the artist’s characteristic contribution to the Romantic marine genre. This picture is to be offered a price of around £37,000 by Clase Fine Art, specialists in European and especially Scandinavian art.
Oakham Galleries are bringing an unusually large and important painting by Edward Pritchett of St Marks Square, Venice (dated 1850, and priced around £70,000). With the recent opening of a new show of Canaletto’s views of Venice at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, buyers may well be seeking out examples of how other artists depicted this fabled city.
Paris was a popular subject for painters later in the 19th Century and visitors to LAPADA at the Royal Academy are likely to find a good selection, including a lively and relatively colourful rendition of La Place Clichy, a watercolour and gouache by Eugene Galien Laloue, for sale from Callaghan Fine Paintings.
Visitors to the Fair may well have seen the Jacob van Rosedale exhibition, which ends June 4th, 2006, taking place next door at the Royal Academy. In the great Dutch landscape tradition, he influenced many British artists in this genre, including Constable, Gainsborough and Turner. The bucolic English landscape will have a place at this fair, with many examples to be found in both oil and watercolour. Haynes Fine Art of Broadway will offer exceptionally large oil on canvas by John Frederick Herring Sr (1795-1865) called Resting the Team Outside Philpotts Inn (36” x 52”, price £165,000). Philpotts was a brewery supplying the counties between London and Bristol. Herring, who had worked as a stable boy and coachman in Yorkshire in his youth, captures this rural idyll with great delicacy. He is best known as a sympathetic painter of animals and Queen Victoria also became a life-long patron.
Modern works are offered by Manya Igel Fine Arts, London, with a selection of pictures by artists such as John Piper, Fred Cuming and Ken Howard. Manya also champions new artists and will bring figurative works by a number of young British painters. Haynes Fine Art of Broadway has a large oil on canvas by Britain’s best known animal painter, David Shepherd: the impressive Tiger Resting (24” x36”, dated c1965-70) is priced at £59,500. Twentieth century decorative prints will be found with dealers such as Odyssey Fine Art, including a striking colour lithograph titled Liberté by Roy Lichtenstein, an edition of "75" published in Paris, 1991, and "Les Nuages" by Fernand Léger and numbered 145/180, printed by Moulot, Paris, 1959 (priced at £1950).
Sculpture will be offered from a number of specialist dealers including Medieval Art, who bring an exquisite Virgo Lactens or Madonna and Child dating from around 1400. Carved in walnut, with polychromy, it stands 70cms tall and demonstrates the highpoint of French international gothic, in the courtly style (price around £60,000). Garret and Hazlehurst Sculpture are bringing a variety of classical bronzes of the 19th and 20th Century, including a very handsome figure of a young man titled Pax et Labor, form about 1880 by Emile Picault (France, 1833-1915), standing 73cms tall.
A young dealer in works of art, Koos Limburg Jr, will offer a sculpture of St George & the Dragon. Despite being Hungarian, with a provenance including a Scottish castle as its last home, this remarkable 15th century wood carving will no doubt take pride of place on Limburg’s stand at this new, very British art and antiques fair.
