International

The chap in the voluminous breeches shown below is far removed from today’s riflemen as far as combat uniform is concerned.

One outcome of Master Drawings New York’s expansion to take in paintings and sculpture as well as works on paper is the inclusion this year of Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, specialist in sculpture and works of art.

Among the works that David Tunick, a longstanding MDNY exhibitor, will be showing this year at his gallery on East 69th Street is this large 18 x 14in (45.5 x 35.5 cm) watercolour over pencil by John Robert Cozens.

Jill Newhouse, a New York dealer with a gallery on East 81st Street, is a veteran of Master Drawings New York, having taken part for many years.

The annual TEFAF art market report has been scrapped in favour of a number of smaller, focused reports.

London is to host a viewing of a small oil painting by Paul Cézanne ahead of its sale in the US.

Renovation of a key venue and repair work following last year’s extreme weather have not deterred exhibitors from the annual migration to Florida for the state’s mega and niche fairs...

Used as the catalogue cover design for an Illustration Art sale held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of New York was the George Lepape watercolour, ‘Après la Tempeste’ shown below.

The picture dealer element of BRAFA is substantial, but increasingly these days the emphasis is on works from the 19th century onwards, be they Impressionist and modern or post-war and contemporary art.

Brussels gears up for its major art and antiques fair this month with the latest edition of BRAFA.

While BRAFA understandably dominates much of the cultural headlines during this period, it is not the only show in town.

Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R Vance Jr, has formed an Antiquities Trafficking Unit to focus on potentially looted artefacts in New York.

BRAFA has long been a fair with a speciality in early (medieval and Renaissance) works of art, which is something that dates back to the years when it was a Belgian National fair in the city centre. It thus serves a venerable collecting tradition drawing in buyers from the local area and further afield.

Tribal art has long been a Belgian speciality due to the country’s colonial history in Africa. So it is not surprising to see this area well represented at BRAFA, with around a dozen participants in this field hailing from Paris, Brussels and as far away as Montreal.

Antiquities is one of BRAFA’s strong suits in terms of exhibitor volume. Around 10 specialists in this field are standing, plus a number of others that mix antiquities with, for example, Asian art.

Some of the works on offer at BRAFA are simply too quirky to fit into any time-honoured collecting category, but they are often responsible for creating an eyecatching draw to a particular stand.