Salon Du Dessin, Paris
‘For the artist, drawing is discovery’ – and this month, in Paris, the Salon du Dessin sets out once again to prove that John Berger’s observation rings as true for collectors, curators, dealers and other devotees of the medium. Returning to its spring slot in the calendar for the first time since the pandemic – and amid the major shake-up in the Parisian art-fair scene caused by the arrival of Art Basel in the French capital – the 31st edition of this veteran fair looks much the same as it did in 2019, with 39 exhibitors arriving at the Palais Brongniart in the Place de la Bourse. But for all that the fair promises a welcome familiarity, Louis de Bayser, its president, makes clear that his aim is also ‘to surprise people’.
There are nine new exhibitors this year; five French, and four from further afield. Parisian gallery Kevorkian brings a page from one of the albums compiled by the Swiss adventurer and engineer Antoine-Louis Henri de Polier in India in the late 18th century, with a portrait of a Mughal prince rendered in gouache, gold and ink, framed within an intricate floral border. Other newcomers include, from New York, Zeit Contemporary Art, which offers works by Picasso, Gauguin and Sam Gilliam, and Fabienne Fiacre, who brings a luminous parakeet done in watercolour and black pencil by Gustave Doré.
As De Bayser says, the fair has been instrumental in establishing Paris as a leading centre for drawing – an entire economy has built up around the medium, including specialised restorers, mounters and framers. Around half of the exhibitors are from France; regulars include Eric Coatalem, whose displays include a capriccio by the Italian artist Marco Ricci, in which a gothic church sits amid a number of classical ruins (including an excellent stone lion), rendered in gouache on vellum. But De Bayser also points to the continuing importance of US collectors – and especially museum curators – to this market.
As such, the fair has always placed a premium on scholarship, and this year is no different. Museum partnerships at the fair include a spotlight on the 10,000-strong collection of the Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides, and a tribute to Ger Luijten, long-serving director of the Fondation Custodia, who died in December. As in previous editions, the fair is a central component of Drawing Week, which also involves an extensive series of private visits to museum collections across the city.
Despite the tribulations of the pandemic and other economic pressures, the market for this medium remains strong – January’s Old Master sales in New York attested to this. The only problem, De Bayser says, is finding enough quality drawings to feed the demand – though his own offering gives cause for reassurance. The highlight is a sinewy drawing of Hercules by Simon Vouet, a study for his Loves of the Gods tapestries, now housed in the Château de Chambord in the Loire valley.
