$20 Million Sale Kicks off Masterpiece Art Fair

Masterpiece, London’s bijou answer to TEFAF, kicked off with a bang this week. Within the first hours of the fair, London’s Symbolic and Chase sold a Cartier corsage from 1912 for over $20 million, Art Daily reports.

Other sales included Lynn Chadwick’s Back to Venice at Osborne Samuel’s boot (pictured above), which reportedly fetched £250,000. The artist is a freshly renewed presence on the market, recently had shows across Blain Southern’s London and Berlin galleries as well as its sister gallery in New York, Blain Di Donna. Four of his sculptures were also exhibited concurrently in the Royal Academy’s courtyard.

Now in its fifth edition, Masterpiece hosts over 150 dealers with an offer spanning 3,000 years of art and design. And, across the fair things were looking up. Masterpiece’s first day saw a 17 percent increase in attendance over last year’s edition.

Click here to see artnet News’ picks for the top 15 finds across the fair.