Our debut participation in Master Drawings New York this winter coincided with a prolonged cold spell of such severity that even the well-adapted New Yorkers may have thought twice about venturing out to visit the exhibitions and auctions. However, it turned out to be ‘business as usual’ and many dealerships put on some impressive displays of drawings and paintings, matched by some exceptional results in the salerooms. The unbeatable formula of connoisseurship and a rigorous eye for quality came to the fore, and collectors remained stimulated and busy.

Following on from an eclectic selection of paintings in oils, pastels, watercolours and drawings offered by us at MDNY, nearly a third of the pictures in this summer’s edition of Gallery Notes® are drawings too. Running a long-established family firm that mostly deals in works from the past, we are often reminded that one must not live in a bygone era. There is neither the space nor the need in this introduction to reflect on how much the business of selling art has transformed over the last two decades but if one adage remains true, it is that the pictures should speak for themselves. Increasingly, with such a premium put on finding ‘fresh’ material, or, in other words, art not offered for sale in the last few decades, the role of the dealer has become even more that of an investigator; an enquiring scholar ready to exercise some intellectual independence on behalf of his or her collectors. This also sometimes means being willing to look beyond the trends and the facts and figures now readily available in our age of information overload and countless art ‘platforms’. To complement our more frequent digital editions of Gallery Notes®, we are enhancing this ninety five year-old business’s online presence with a more advanced and enjoyable website, soon to be launched, to match our continued commitment to traditional advertising, hosting exhibitions and publishing articles and catalogues.

Longer-standing readers of Gallery Notes® will spot the names of painters indelibly associated with our firm such as the Van de Velde brothers, Antoine Berjon, Dominic Serres, Alfred Stevens, Gabriel Loppé and Antoine Guillemet, but in an attempt to balance the category between still life, landscape and ‘figure’ pictures, we are pleased to offer such a variety of European and British art spanning three centuries with some fine newcomers to our gallery.