Having established itself as one of the highlights of the summer season, London Art Week returns to the capital from 30 June–7 July. Held in galleries across St James’s and Mayfair – the art trade’s historic centre – the event sees 50 participants (including three auction houses) present a diverse selection of works from antiquity to the present day – prices range from £1,000 to £5 million. This year the event also sees a number of new cultural partnerships, including the National Gallery, the Ashmolean, the Wallace Collection and Sir John Soane’s Museum, as well as curator-led talks.
As ever, there are some remarkable antiquities on show. Rupert Wace Ancient Art presents a Greco-Roman bronze mirror cover featuring three female figures in relief and dated to the 2nd–1st century, while Kallos Gallery’s exhibition ‘Where We Are and Where We Have Been’ includes an abstract early Bronze Age marble idol from Anatolia. Ariadne Galleries stages ‘Ancient Greek Vases and Fragments’, which features an Attic black-figure hydria attributed to the Princeton Painter, active in Athens in the 6th century BC.
St Louis of France (1620s), Juan de Mesa. Colnaghi at London Art Week
For sculpture, make a beeline for Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, which presents ‘Canova and his Legacy’. This exhibition about the revolutionary neoclassical master considers his impact on the Italian school and beyond, and includes Cincinnato Baruzzi’s Baccante Cimbalista of 1837. The display is mounted in the dealers’ new space at 67 Jermyn Street, the opening of which has been timed to coincide with London Art Week. Elsewhere, a marble relief of 1853 depicting the Temptation of Adam by Italian sculptor Giovanni Duprè, who was influenced by Canova, can be seen at Trinity Fine Art, while Benjamin Proust offers two 15th-century marble reliefs of the Annunciation by Giovanni da Bissone. Daniel Katz’s exhibition ‘The Romantics to Rodin’ includes Géricault’s expressive Le moribund from around 1819. Meanwhile, Colnaghi has a fine selection of works, among them a striking life-size polychrome sculpture depicting St Louis of France by the baroque sculptor Juan de Mesa. Executed in the 1620s, the work is believed to have been commissioned for the chapel of the French Nation in the convent church of San Francisco de Asís, Seville.
Medieval and Renaissance Spanish art is the focus at Sam Fogg, and the display here includes Tomás Giner’s Martyrdom of Saint Vincent (c. 1460). Other highlights include Domenico Conti’s portrait of Canova at Simon C. Dickinson, John Martin’s dramatic City of God at Lowell Libson, and Guido Reni’s playful Two Bacchantes at Moretti Fine Art. For modern painting head to Robilant+Voena, which concentrates on the work of the Italian still life painter Giorgio Morandi. Flowers (1950) is simply executed in the artist’s typical earthy tones. Galleria Carlo Virgilio, meanwhile, focuses on portraits from the 18th to the 20th century, among them Renato Tomassi’s Portrait at the Front (1918).
Flowers (1950), Giorgio Morandi. Robilant+Voena at London Art Week
For Old Master drawings, don’t miss Ramon Art, where the collection of Spanish, French and Italian works on paper includes sheets by Claude Deruet and Anton Raphael Mengs, or Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, which offers works by both Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo. Elsewhere, an Italian 14th-century iron basinet can be found at Peter Finer’s exhibition ‘The Knight’, and Burzio presents furniture by Bartolomeo Manghetti and Pietro Piffetti at Robilant + Voena.
Also this month Hill-Stone, a specialist in prints and drawings from the 15th to the early 20th century, makes the trip from New England for its ninth annual exhibition at the Fine Art Society (29 June–7 July). It’s also worth seeking out the multi-dealer ceramics show ‘A Collector’s Paradise’ at Brian Haughton Gallery, which runs alongside London Art Week (30 June–7 July). Ahead of this, the Haughtons are running a two-day symposium entitled ‘The Splendour of the Dining Room’ at Christie’s (28–29 June), examining the place of ceramics in the social background of the 18th century, as well as encompassing the latest research.
Jéroboam puni pour avoir adoré les faux Dieux (1731), Jacques Ignatius de Roore. Franck Baulme at Paris Tableau Brussels
Old Masters fair Paris Tableau, founded in 2011, was folded into last year’s Biennale des Antiquaires. Now, a new edition of the event is launching in Brussels under the name Paris Tableau Brussels (8–11 June). Located in La Patinoire Royale, it brings together 20 galleries specialising in Old Master painting. Among the new exhibitors are Colnaghi and Ana Chiclana, as well as three Brussels dealers: Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge, Costermans, and Jan Muller. The latter brings the beautiful Holy Family with St Elizabeth, dated to the late 1560s, by Willem and Adriaen Thomasz Key. Other Flemish works on offer include Jacob Jordaens’ Two Studies of a Male Nude (c. 1615–20) at Talabardon & Gautier, which reveals the artist’s debt to Rubens, and Jacques Ignatius de Roore’s Jéroboam puni pour avoir adoré les faux Dieux (1731) at Franck Baulme. Porcini presents Luca Giordano’s The Abduction of Europa, a theme to which the artist returned throughout his career, and which was a feature of early 17th-century Neapolitan painting. Other highlights include Giovanni Domenico Lombardi’s depiction of ‘Biribi’ players at Canesso, and Vesuvius erupting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes at Didier Aaron.
From the June 2017 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.