Guggenheim Jeune, situated in a former pawnbroker’s at 30 Cork Street, operated for just eighteen months between January 1938 and June 1939. While its lifespan may have been brief, its influence was considerable, both on the art world at the time and on Peggy herself; by the time the gallery closed, she was a self-confessed “art addict”. This exhibition will showcase Guggenheim’s parallel collecting interests in Abstraction and Surrealism through a display of works by Jean (Hans) Arp and Yves Tanguy, artists that she collected and championed. It also sheds new light on her earliest experiences in the art world, including unpublished floor plans of the gallery and details of the artists, advisors and lovers who assisted her original ambition, thwarted by the war, to open a museum of modern art in London.

Olivier Malingue Ltd presents L’Empreinte, a group exhibition including works by Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Yves Klein, Man Ray and Ed Ruscha. Imprint can be an embossed relief, as in Ed Ruscha’s Ghost Station (2011), where absence becomes presence through the fibres of a sheet of paper. Or it can be the impression obtained by rubbing a textured surface, as in the frottage drawings and paintings by Ernst, Penrose and Oppenheim, a technique Ernst started using in 1925. The exhibi- tion includes several contemporary interpretations of the “imprint”, such as a mural by the Paris-based artist Thu-Van Tran.

As is now tradition, Stephen Ongpin & Guy Peppiatt join forces for their annual Winter exhibition of One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours, featuring works dating from the 16th to the 20th century and priced between £500 and £12,000. As usual the gallery will be hung Salon style, with drawings and watercolours from floor to ceiling. A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Highlight works for sale include:
Among recent acquisitions at Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker is a brown ink and paper drawing of Elizabeth Siddal Having Her Hair Combed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with an inscription on the reverse by William Michael Rossetti: ‘By Gabriel - I think a watercolour was made of this c. 1855’.

Ariadne Galleries will offer Face of Serapis, an important depiction of a cult god from Hellenistic Egypt, circa 1st century BC. This finely wrought marble, from a renowned US collection, is a work that manifests a strangely beguiling presence.

A seasonal offering at Bagshawe Fine Art is Wild Turkey, an oil on canvas by Wenzel Peter (1745-1829). Born in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Peter moved at the age of 22 to Rome where he built a sound reputation. His area of expertise was that of animal painting and he soon came to the attention of some of the most significant patrons of art in Rome. One of his earliest successes was his 1779 fresco of animal paintings on the walls of the Casino di Villa Borghese for Prince Marcantonio Borghese III. By the early 19th century he had become the foremost animal painter in Italy, with his pictures entering many important private collections. His monumental canvas Adam and Eve in Paradise (now in the Vatican Museum) shows some 240 species of animal from different parts of the globe. The turkey in the present picture is clearly worked from the one that appears prominently in the centre foreground of Adam and Eve in Paradise.

Returning to London Art Week is M & L Fine Art. The Mayfair gallery joins this Winter’s participants which include: Didier Aaron, Ariadne Galleries, Bagshawe Fine Art, Charles Beddington Ltd, Benappi Fine Art, Brun Fine Art, Callisto Fine Arts, Colnaghi, Ben Elwes Fine Art, Sam Fogg, Oliver Forge & Brendan Lynch Ltd, Daniel Katz Gallery, Gallery Laocoon & Galleria del Laocoonte, Lowell Libson and Jonny Yarker Ltd, Lullo·Pampoulides, Olivier Malingue Ltd, Mullany Haute Epoque Fine Art, John Mitchell Fine Paintings, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, Ordovas, Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Raccanello Leprince, Karen Taylor Fine Art, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Trinity Fine Art, Galleria Carlo Virgilio & C. and The Weiss Gallery, along with Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

London Art Week Winter 2019 has a new opening day, a Sunday, and on Monday 2 December the new LAW symposium will launch, at the National Gallery following the lunchtime talk (mentioned above). Taking place from 2.30 - 5.30pm, the symposium will comprise a number of panel discussions committed to exploring three subjects defining the art world today. Speakers will include international museum directors, curators, collectors and journalists. A further announcement about the symposium will be made soon.