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.