“So many of our exhibitions this summer exemplified the tenacity and patience of dealers with deep knowledge and an experienced eye,” said Crispian Riley-Smith, Founding Director of London Art Week. “LAW dealers carefully foster relationships with owners of important private collections, which enable them to offer many discoveries and works fresh to the market. This approach to sourcing their stock, along with the huge effort put in to themed displays, has drawn the attentions of a wide strata of visitor: the exhibitions have impressed curators from the world’s leading museums as well as scholarly collectors, while first-time buyers have engaged with art genres and periods new to them, and interested members of the public have been eager to discover more about historic works by eminent artists.”

Sales have been reported across the board from more affordably-priced works to the high end, with the majority of immediate gallery sales in the mid-price range. Strong interest has been shown, including by museums, in more important works, which often take some time to conclude, and many dealers have said sales are in the pipeline.

Footfall was for most galleries up on past London Art Weeks. “Nearly everyone has told us they have met serious new customers,” added Riley-Smith, “and talked to representatives of museums as well as major international trade buyers. Being creative with their exhibition themes also makes a strong impact in marketing terms.”

Regular participants commented on how busy they were, and the success of this summer’s event. An important oil sketch, only recently discovered, for Édoaurd-Bernard Debat-Ponsan’s Le Massage – Scène de Hammam (1883) was sold by Bagshawe Fine Art to the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France; the museum has been home to the finished painting since 1885. The study, which carried an asking price of 12,000 euros, sold as a result of London Art Week press coverage. Jorge Coll, CEO of Colnaghi and a Board Member of LAW said: “We’re excited that a number of important works have found new homes. [LAW] continues to be the most important and vibrant moment of the year in London for Old Masters."

“There has been a high footfall this year and new people attending,” said Dino Tomasso, a Board Member of London Art Week and Partner at Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, where sales included two major bronzes to private collectors priced in the region of £1,000,000 each. Alex Toscano of Trinity Fine Art and a Board Member of LAW said: “We are very satisfied that London Art Week is now firmly embedded in the London art scene. We’ve had great comments from visitors.” Sales included a portrait by Merry-Joseph Blondel (1781-1853) for a high five-figure sum and two other paintings are on reserve. Crispian Riley-Smith noted that “portraits seem to have sold particularly well, of the finest quality and with well-researched histories behind them.”

Among the ten new participants this summer, Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art (Rome) said they were very impressed by their first LAW: “It is a better format than a fair… and an ideal way of getting to know people”, reporting strong interest in all their works, and potential sales are in discussion. Their remarkable discovery of a long-lost painting by Antonio Canova drew a great deal of attention from museum visitors. Tyr Baudouin of Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge (Brussels) had seen “principal international collectors of Flemish art” and had met valuable potential new customers. Caretto & Occhinegro, young dealers from Turin, were thrilled to connect with curators from the Ashmolean Museum and Rubenshuis, and said that LAW was “a great meeting point”. Sales included a religious painting by the 16th century Flemish artist Willem Key for a “high five-figure sum”.

Galleria del Laocoonte new participants (exhibiting with Galleria W. Apolloni) based in Rome and London, met many serious people including museum curators. Among sales was a self-portrait by Arthur Segal (1875-1944), an émigré from Nazi Germany, who in 1937 founded the London ‘Painting School for Professionals and Non-Professionals’ which propounded painting as psychotherapy. The portrait went to a private UK collector. [image available]

Dealers specialising in drawings reported the week as a great success. Stephen Ongpin Fine Art commented that “London Art Week is always an active time for us, with collectors and curators coming in from America and Europe. We have averaged about seventy visitors a day. We made a total of eighteen sales during the week, six of which were to museums, and our largest sale so far has been of a lovely pastel portrait by Eva Gonzalès to a European private collector, for roughly £350,000.” Lowell Libson, LAW Board Member and Director of Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd, whose exhibition of English Stuart-era drawings was a highlight of LAW, commented: “I’ve had very enthusiastic comments about London Art Week and its activities from many of the large number of visitors the event has brought into us. London Art Week has been a success.” James Mackinnon was very happy and made sales across the board, of drawings and paintings from late 18th to early 19th century at prices from around £10,000 up to six-figures. “We saw all the right people, and met a group of young American curators who had come over especially to visit some of the LAW galleries”, he added.

Guy Peppiatt was very pleased with his first LAW and made twelve sales to US and European buyers including museums, with prices ranging from £2,000 to £10,000. A past client that Guy had lost contact with saw a work from the dealer featured in the Financial Times preview and got back in touch with him to buy it.

In the same way that collectors have for centuries cast their net wide over a broad spectrum of works of art they wished to own, LAW offers buyers more than just paintings, sculptures and drawings. Specialist disciplines at LAW Summer 2018 included antiquities, renaissance pottery, furniture and textiles. Sam Fogg, whose exhibition of early Medieval and Renaissance textiles caused quite a sensation and achieved very good sales, was especially pleased to have engaged with first-time textile buyers; a highlight sale was a spectacular c1460s tapestry, the only known surviving fragment of a set believed to have been displayed at the marriage in 1468 of Charles the Bold (1433–1477) and Margaret of York (1446–1503) that depicts the Marriage of Blancheflower from the epic poem of Garin and Bégon.

Raccanello Leprince was very happy, reporting a steady stream of visitors and sales. They saw all the right people, including the curator of the Washington DC exhibition they had based their renaissance pottery and print exhibition on. Oliver Forge & Brendan Lynch Ltd had by Thursday morning (5 July) sold almost half of their exhibition of antiquities, including one of the most important works, an exceptional Attic black-figure amphora, to a new buyer. With prices starting around £2000 reaching up to around £60,000, this was an accessible exhibition, “and we’ve had more visitors than in the past”. [images available]

Museum representatives visiting LAW exhibitions included: National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Art Institute of Chicago, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Harvard University Art Museums, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Yale Center for British Art, the Huntington Library and Museum of Art, the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, and from the UK, the Ashmolean Museum, the Sir John Soane’s Museum, the National Gallery, and the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Philippa Gimlette, CEO of London Art Week, said: “The gallery hops and special tours have been a huge success attracting several hundred additional attendees, and have ensured each LAW participant was able to meet fresh faces at some point during the week. All our talks were a sell-out. We’re immensely grateful to our sponsors, speakers and museum partners including the National Gallery, Sir John Soane’s Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, the Ashmolean, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Wallace Collection for their pro-active support of LAW.”

Summing up the atmosphere of London Art Week, Tom Davies, Director of Daniel Katz Gallery noted “There was a real buzz over the course of the week, with a feeling of serious people becoming more comfortable navigating galleries they had not previously visited.”

Amidst the clamour of the modern art world, London Art Week provides serious dealers with a unique platform from which to share their learning and research expertise, as well as demonstrating a long-term understanding of their specialised fields.

Dates and events for London Art Week Winter, inaugurated last year during the first week of December 2017, will be confirmed shortly.