Breughel Landscape - By Scott Reyburn

A European collector paid $3 million for a Pieter Breughel the Younger painting, “Winter Landscape With the Massacre of the Innocents,'' exhibited by London dealer Johnny van Haeften.

“I'd never seen this person before,'' said Van Haeften. ``That's the thing about Maastricht. You're always meeting new people.'' He said he had sold six paintings, including a 17th- century Dutch church interior by Anthonie de Lorme for $3 million.

Brussels-based tribal art dealer Bernard de Grunne said business at the preview was “unusually good.'' De Grunne had sold seven pieces, led by an Ivory Coast Bete-tribe wood sculpture, priced at 120,000 euros.

A $30 million Van Gogh portrait of a child, offered by the London-based dealers and agents Dickinson, and a $15 million Lucian Freud painting, “Ria, Naked Portrait,'' on the stand of Acquavella Galleries Inc., are among the most expensive works at the fair.

Potential Buyers

The galleries said both works had attracted “significant interest'' from potential buyers at the preview.

The Paris dealer Eric Coatelem said that he had sold Eugene Delacroix's circa-1840 oil sketch, "A Seated Oriental,'' to a U.S. private collector for 1.1 million euros.

Graham Southern, director of the London contemporary-art dealer Haunch of Venison -- whose ownership by Christie's International disqualified it from exhibiting at last year's Basel and Frieze contemporary art fairs -- said the gallery had sold 10 works at its inaugural Tefaf fair. Gerhard Richter's 1964 black- and-white painting “Portrat Schmela'' was bought by a European collector for ``a little under'' $2 million.

Among the dealers in traditional antiques -- a collecting area that has suffered a general decline in popularity in recent years -- Paris dealer Alan Rubin of Pelham Galleries said he sold around eight pieces on the opening night. These included a pair of circa-1775 English painted wood pedestals in the manner of Robert Adam for 160,000 euros.

“Antiques aren't recession proof,'' said Rubin. ``In recent years there's been a flight to quality and if you've got sufficiently good things dealers in traditional things can still do business.''