From the June 2026 issue of Apollo.
‘We are the summer art fair,’ says Thomas Woodham-Smith, co-founder of Treasure House. For its fourth edition, the fair returns to the Royal Hospital Chelsea as both a focused display of antiques and fine art, and a fair designed to channel the festival feel of London in the summer. As well as featuring some 50 dealers, the fair is marking 90 years of British Surrealism with a non-selling display of 40 works from Southampton City Art Gallery. Treasure House is traditional at heart, but, Woodham-Smith says, ‘I am always excited by the unanticipated – and that is the biggest thrill.’
Treasure House Fair takes place at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from 24–30 June.
Apollo ’s highlights
Pair of commodes (c. 1745), attr. Mathieu Criaerd
Frank Partridge, London
Mathieu Criaerd was one of the most prominent cabinet-makers in 18th-century France, ascending to the title of master in the French woodworkers’ guild in 1738 and crafting this pair of commodes for Versailles a few years later. Covered in white lacquer and painted with papiers des Indes decoration by Alexis Peyrotte, the commodes feature cabriole legs and ormolu mounts – all fit for a king, or at least his mistress.
Catalogue of the first Surrealist art exhibition in England (1936)
Peter Harrington, London/New York
The first Surrealist exhibition in England was held in 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries and featured work by Picabia, Ernst, Duchamp, Dalí and others. This rare first edition of the catalogue contains essays by André Breton and by the art historian Herbert Read.
Portrait of a bearded man (c. 1550), Léonard Limosin
Foster & Gane, Oxfordshire
A note affixed to the frame of this Limoges roundel says that it depicts Cardinal Campeggio, who in 1528 tried the divorce case between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and gave the enamel to Cardinal Wolsey. A more plausible story is that it depicts Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. Either way, the piece has not been seen for almost five centuries – until it was acquired recently from the Legh family of Adlington Hall.
Pair of sconces (c. 1705), Philip Arbuthnot
Ronald Phillips, London
A gift from Queen Anne to the Sultan of Morocco, these are a very rare surviving example of sconces made from red verre églomisé, whereby a gold or silver leaf design is applied to the reverse of a piece of glass.
Gallery highlights
Max Beckmann
4 June–11 July
Hauser & Wirth, Basel
Beckmann has long been associated with both the hard-edged political satire of New Objectivity and the doom-laden visions of the German Expressionists (though he disavowed the latter label). Many of the works on show in this exhibition, which spans his whole career, are characterised by angst, but there is room for some of his lighter pieces too, such as a seaside scene of 1932.
Anne Imhof: Citizen
5 June–1 August
Sprüth Magers, London
The German artist’s latest show gives a glimpse of her range: paintings, a four-channel film, a site-specific sculpture, drawings and bronze reliefs are all on display here. The exhibition develops some of the ideas Imhof explored in two recent projects: DOOM, her largest performance work yet, which premiered in New York in 2025; and ‘Fun is a Steel Bath’, an exhibition at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto that ended in April.
Songs of Innocence & Experience, Part II
20 June–5 September
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Although he left behind thousands of paintings and drawings after his death in 2009, the Antiguan artist Frank Walter has only gained serious attention in the last few years, thanks in no small part to Ingleby Gallery, which staged his first posthumous exhibition in 2013. This follow-up show blends examples of Walter’s small, captivating oil-on-card works, often of flowers, trees or Caribbean seasides, with works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by him, including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Peter Doig and Andrew Cranston.
Henry Moore: The Female Form
3 June–28 August
Richard Green, London
If Kew Gardens is the place to see the sculptor in monumental mode this month, Richard Green Gallery is where you can witness Moore at small scale. United by a common subject – the female body – the 14 bronzes displayed here are all maquettes (studies for larger works), so give a revealing insight into the painstaking process from initital idea to finished sculpture.
Fair in focus
Zurich Art Weekend
12–14 June
Various venues
The weekend before Art Basel comes to town, it’s the turn of Zurich, only an hour or so away by train, to stake its claim as a centre for modern and contemporary art. The ninth edition of Zurich Art Weekend is focused on art, naturally, but there has always been an interdisciplinary feel to the event, with talks and debates, dance performances, artist-curated club nights, food programmes and more taking place at some 70 different venues across the city. Part of the event’s aim, as ever, is to strengthen the bonds between cultural spaces of different kinds, with larger institutions such as the Kunsthaus Zurich – which is holding exhibitions of work by Marisol and Kerry James Marshall – to commercial galleries, publishing houses, independent art spaces, foundations, and various corporate and private collections all taking part.
From the June 2026 issue of Apollo.
