From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) returns to Maastricht this month, featuring some 260 dealers from 20 different countries, all of whom will show off their most noteworthy pieces at Maastricht’s Exhibition and Conference Centre. As well as the Old Masters and antiques for which the fair is best known, modern and contemporary works, from drawings to jewellery, will also make an appearance. In the following pages, Susan Moore selects her highlights from the works at the fair and Apollo travels further afield to pick the most interesting exhibitions in the surrounding region.
A figure possibly representing Charles VII of France (15th century, after 1437). Galerie Sismann, price on application. Photo: Inn Studio
A figure possibly representing Charles VII of France (15th century, after 1437)
Galerie Sismann, price on application
Full-length representations of French kings are rare, but all share the same iconography of crown, azure-blue cloak adorned with fleurs-de-lis – worn during coronation ceremonies – plus sword and sceptre. Here, the fleurs-de-lis are carved directly into the stone and the figure brandishes the pommel of a sceptre in his right hand. His heavy, rimmed eyelids, fleshy nose and marked nasolabial folds suggest an identification with Charles VII, whose features were recorded in a bust from a recumbent statue in the Cathedral of Saint-Denis as well as in 15th-century manuscripts. This rediscovery attests to the revival of Paris as an artistic centre after the Hundred Years War.
The Entombment (c. 1545), Maarten van Heemskerck. Caretto & Occhinegro, around €500,000. Courtesy Caretto & Occhinegro
The Entombment (c. 1545), Maarten van Heemskerck
Caretto & Occhinegro, around €500,000
This painting by one of the greatest exponents of the Netherlandish Renaissance is a significant rediscovery. As museums in the Netherlands marked the 450th anniversary of the artist’s death last year, technical and art-historical research continued apace on this panel before it was unveiled at TEFAF and exhibited in Turin. It has been identified as the primary version of the variant in the Pinacoteca dell’Accademia Albertina in Turin and the central panel of a triptych whose wings are in the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Van Heemskerck’s monumental style and emphasis on anatomical detail reflect the profound influence of his trip to Rome in the 1530s, where he studied not only contemporary artists such as Michelangelo but also classical sculpture.
Trilobed basin (Urbino, c. 1565–75), Workshops of Orazio Fontana or Flaminio Fontana. Camille Leprince, price on application. Photo: © Jérémie Beylard/Galerie Camille Leprinc
Trilobed basin (Urbino, c. 1565–75), Workshops of Orazio Fontana or Flaminio Fontana
Camille Leprince, price on application
Maiolica pottery is one of the glories of Italian Renaissance art and istoriato wares – those painted with stories – the most renowned. This piece exuberantly combines historical scenes, grotesque designs and inset cameos on the border, as well as mythological sea gods. Each lobe and the central medallion depict episodes from the life of Joseph as told in the Book of Genesis; they are modelled after wood engravings by the French artist Bernard Salomon (c. 1508–c. 1561). The basin was probably based on a silver vessel and originally accompanied by a jug. The watery theme is highlighted by the seashell-shaped cavities, the sea gods painted between them and the paired stylised swans that decorate the reverse.
The Three Trees (1643), Rembrandt van Rijn. Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler, price on application. Photo: © Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler
The Three Trees (1643), Rembrandt van Rijn
Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler, price on application
Rembrandt’s largest and most dynamic etched landscape, this print masterfully combined not only various techniques but also varied depths of etched lines and different tones to convey a range of atmospheric effects reflecting the majesty of nature in flux. The thundery sky occupies almost two-thirds of the composition. Dark clouds hover ominously or roil; sheets of diagonal rain cross the paper. In the distance, clouds draw moisture from the earth, while the three trees in the foreground are whipped by wind. In between, light and shadow play across the landscape. Man’s place in this landscape – as artist, lover, fisherman – is incidental. This is a superb early impression.
Pair of Russian mounted coupes (c. 1795). Kollenburg Antiquairs, €385,000. Photo: Eric van Laarhoven Photography
Pair of Russian mounted coupes (c. 1795)
Kollenburg Antiquairs, €385,000
The passion for mineralogy in Russia had grown to such proportions in the latter part of the 18th century that Catherine the Great claimed her own vast collection a malady of ‘stone sickness’ or ‘stone fever’. Luxury objects such as these mounted vessels form a link between the scientific and the aesthetic – a literal gilding of the lily. Homogenous blocks of agate were difficult to find, which made pairs of vessels extremely rare, not least given the risk of fractures when finely worked. These lobed, oval coupes were probably originally produced in Germany in the 17th century and remounted in St Petersburg – perhaps as potpourri vases – according to the neoclassical taste of the day.
Portrait of Maria Soledad Rocha Fernandez de la Peña, Marquesa de Caballero (1807), Francisco de Goya. Robilant + Voena, upwards of $5m. Courtesy Robilant + Voena
Portrait of Maria Soledad Rocha Fernandez de la Peña, Marquesa de Caballero (1807), Francisco de Goya
Robilant + Voena, upwards of $5m
Goya painted the marquesa, a lady-in-waiting to Queen María Luisa de Parma – whom he also painted – as a pendant to the portrait of her husband, Secretary of Grace and Justice to Charles IV, which is now in the Huntington Library in California. She wears a medallion portrait of the queen, presented to the sitter by the monarch on the birth of her first daughter, the portrait suggested by a few summary strokes of the artist’s brush. His evocation of the marquesa’s diaphanous patterned gown, fringed with transparent lace, is a tour de force of loose, impressionistic brushwork which ‘reads’ from a distance. This canvas has recently been identified as the primary version of this portrait.
Still Life with Two Sacks and a Bottle (1884), Vincent Van Gogh. M.S. Rau, $4.75m. Courtesy M.S. Rau
Still Life with Two Sacks and a Bottle (1884), Vincent Van Gogh
M.S. Rau, $4.75m
This early still life is dated to the artist’s return to rural Nuenen in his native North Brabant, where he supported himself by teaching painting to a goldsmith, a tanner and a telegrapher in nearby Eindhoven. A letter to his brother in November 1884 describes painting still lifes ‘day in and day out’, featuring ‘Gothic things’ such as old jars and antiques. Executed just two years after the artist himself had been taught to paint in oils, it shows him working his pigment liberally and fluently. While most of Van Gogh’s works of the period are sombre subjects in earth tones, this painting employs richly impastoed, luscious passages of colour. Perhaps this relates to the solace provided by the subject-matter: sacks of tobacco and a wine bottle.
Interior with Girl by a Window (n.d.), Peter Ilsted. Åmells, €250,000. Photo: © Åmells
Interior with Girl by a Window (n.d.), Peter Ilsted
Åmells, €250,000
Like Carl Holsøe and his brother-in-law Vilhelm Hammershøi, Ilsted focused on quiet domestic interiors. The legacy of their Danish predecessors and of the Dutch masters of the 17th century is evident in the subtlety and restraint of this atmospheric scene, but there is none of the austerity characteristic of Hammershøi’s spare, near monochrome geometries. A soft light suffuses the room, enlivening the polished surfaces of the chair and table and highlighting the transparency of the window curtain and the copper tints of the braided hair of the girl at the window, probably one of the artist’s daughters.
Thistle flower choker necklace (c. 1905), René Lalique. Epoque Fine Jewels, price on application. Courtesy Epoque Fine Jewels, Belgium
Thistle flower choker necklace (c. 1905), René Lalique
Epoque Fine Jewels, price on application
Previously known only through published designs, this singular necklace appears to have been commissioned directly from Lalique by a descendant of its previous owner. The jeweller preferred the flora of woods and meadows to garden or hot-house flowers, favouring species endowed with symbolic meaning. The spiny thistle, associated with courage and protection, and the emblem of the dukes of Lorraine, also encouraged a mellow autumnal poetry, expressed here by the use of moulded, amber-coloured pentagonal glass plaques adorned with intertwined thistle flowers. The necklace signals the artist’s transition from art nouveau to art deco.
L’Abandon (1886–1905; this version cast 1905–37), Camille Claudel. Galerie Malaquais, price on application. Photo: Galerie Malaquais/Fontenoy Alkama
L’Abandon (1886–1905; this version cast 1905–37), Camille Claudel
Galerie Malaquais, price on application
Claudel began exploring the theme of impassioned reunions around 1886, presenting at the Salon two years later the first large-scale plaster version under the title Sakountala, a sculpture based on the story of an enchanted king and his missing wife told in an ancient Sanskrit play. This moment of rapturous embrace was captured again in Vertumne et Pomone, carved in marble in 1905, and the scaled-down L’Abandon, exhibited later that year at the Salon d’Automne. These changes of title and media perhaps reflect the universality of Claudel’s theme – and the passion of her tumultuous relationship with her mentor Auguste Rodin. Claudel’s dealer Eugène Blot supervised the bronze casts of L’Abandon in two sizes: 62cm and 43cm.
Orange Cross (c. 1947), Hilla von Rebay. Galerie Raphaël Durazzo, around $150,000. Courtesy Galerie Raphael Durazzo; © Hilla Rebay Foundation
Orange Cross (c. 1947), Hilla von Rebay
Galerie Raphaël Durazzo, around $150,000
Hilla von Rebay, a pioneering artist, teacher and curator best known for her pivotal role in creating the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, is one of the focuses of this year’s Showcase section. Most profoundly influenced by Kandinsky and Hans Arp and his fellow Dadaists – as well as by Rudolf Steiner and Theosophy – her collages and paintings explore spirituality and its geometrical translation into ‘non-objective art’. Her suggestive, disembodied geometries of flat colour and line hover above the picture plane, expressing the relationship between ‘rhythm, line, balance and measure’ and ‘the inner cosmic order’.
Lament for Lady ( for Billie Holiday) (1953), Shinkichi Tajiri. Mayor Gallery, €165,000. Photo: © Michiel Elseveier Stokmans; courtesy Mayor Gallery/Estate of Shinkichi Tajiri
Lament for Lady ( for Billie Holiday) (1953), Shinkichi Tajiri
Mayor Gallery, €165,000
Along with a flock of other ex-servicemen, the JapaneseAmerican artist Shinkichi Tajiri went to Paris in 1948 to study. There he learned painting and sculpture with Ossip Zadkine and Fernand Léger at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Initially engaged in abstract forms constructed of iron and plaster, he soon turned to creating ‘One-Day’ sculptures from items sourced from rubble heaps around abandoned factories and along the banks of the River Seine. Welded together with wire or brass, these assemblages inhabit a space between abstraction, allusion and anthropomorphism. This much-exhibited piece comes from the artist’s estate.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.