Rarity, Integrity and Beauty: Stuart Lochhead Sculpture at TEFAF 2025
Stuart Lochhead Sculpture is a London-based gallery and art dealership specializing in fine sculpture, offering exceptional works ranging from antiquity through the Neoclassical period to modern and contemporary art. The gallery is known for sourcing and presenting rare, museum-quality sculptures to collectors, institutions, and museums worldwide.
This year, Stuart Lochhead Sculpture returns to TEFAF Maastricht, one of the world’s premier art fairs, taking place from March 15-20. The gallery’s main exhibit will highlight Master Sculptors and Painters from the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. It will also present works by Diego Velázquez and Michelangelo Buonarroti, offering a rare opportunity to view these masterpieces, which have remained in private collections since their creation.
Below is an interview with Stuart Lochhead, discussing the gallery’s displays and exhibitions at TEFAF this year, as well as sharing insights into the history and mission of Stuart Lochhead Sculpture.
Can you share the journey that led to the establishment of Stuart Lochhead Sculpture in 2018, and how your prior experience influenced this venture?
Having worked for one of the most talented and leading dealers in London, Daniel Katz, for 23 years, I felt it was time to make my own mark in the dealing world. The experience I gained working with some of the best sculpture on the market at an international level, with some of the best collectors and most important museums, helped me immensely with starting my own business in 2018.
Stuart Lochhead Sculpture’s three core values are rarity, integrity and beauty. Can you elaborate on them?
I believe it is important to be true to the work of art and only offer the best that one can find, be it a well-known artist or one who has been overlooked. If you start with the work of art and know it to be rare, beautiful, and genuine, then you know you are doing the best service you can to the collector or museum and the work of art itself. Integrity is so important in life in general and something that people recognise and trust.
How do these principles guide your selection of sculptures for a fair like TEFAF Maastricht?
Our aim is to offer the best sculpture available on the market when we exhibit at TEFAF Maastricht. It is what TEFAF is renowned for and it is what the clients and museums visiting expect. From time to time, we also like to create a theme or a mini exhibition to give context to the works of art. This allows collectors to better understand what they are looking at. Last year, we made an exhibition of polychrome sculpture from the 19th century. This year, we will showcase a special exhibition of master sculptors of the early 20th century, highlighting the interplay between figurative tradition and abstraction.
What is the significance of a fair like TEFAF for Stuart Lochhead Sculpture?
It is the most important event we do during the year. We spend a great deal of our time researching and planning for TEFAF. It is an extraordinary art fair where all the great museums of the world visit and where we can meet so many different collectors. The unexpected always happens at Maastricht!
What is the key to achieving a balance when showcasing works from antiquity to more modern times?
As I mentioned before, we sometimes create an exhibition to bring together the different works we show but also, when a work of art is of the best quality, it can live side by side with works from different eras.
Among the highlights of this year’s TEFAF display will be two works by Velázquez and Michelangelo. Can you tell us more about them?
Velázquez was a young man of around 21 when he painted the portrait of Sor Jerónima de la Fuente, a woman who was probably more of a celebrity than him at the time. But already, he had the reputation of being a precociously talented and insightful portraitist. In her face, you can see the determination and absolute conviction of a woman who is about to traverse the new world to set up the first nunnery in Asia against great odds.
In her hand, she grips, rather like a weapon, a bronze Corpus. It is this sculpture cast from a model by Michelangelo that we will display alongside the portrait. The design of the Corpus was developed by Michelangelo over many years, as he contemplated his own faith and also by exchanging ideas with the Roman noblewoman Vittoria Colonna.
She gave him verses of her poetry and he gave her exquisite drawings, including an image of this model of Christ, where he is crucified with four nails. It was this very design that helped him promote this iconography, and change the image of Christ on the cross in Spain and the new world, after it was sent to Seville in 1597. This is a tale of devotion, inspiration, and global travel.
What is the connection between them that encouraged you to present them in a two-object exhibition?
These masterpieces from Italy’s greatest Renaissance sculptor and Spain’s foremost Baroque painter create a dialogue that transcends time. They tell a tale of artistic influence, spiritual resonance and cultural exchange that is deeply linked to the life of two extraordinary early modern women: the Roman mystical poet Vittoria Colonna, and the Spanish nun Jerónima de la Fuente.
By showing these two works together, we are able to shine a light on the influence of these two remarkable women and illustrate how they played an important part in the creation of two works of art. The artists do not emerge as isolated geniuses, but as participants in a rich and global web of cultural production.
The gallery’s core display will focus on Master Sculptors and Painters from the Renaissance and Early Modern period. Could you tell us more about some of the key works that will be displayed?
We will be showing a very beautiful terracotta sculpture of a “Tripod” by Joseph Chinard. This is inspired by an antique form of a perfume burner that was discovered in Pompeii in the 18th century. Made by one of the greatest terracotta modellers in the late 18th century France, it utterly belies its material, as the antique version was made in bronze. But Chinard is showing off his incredible skill in clay.
We will also be showing an exquisite marble relief of the Virgin by the great Italian Symbolist sculptor Adolfo Widlt. Rare to find outside of Italy, this relief was first exhibited at the Rome Biennale in 1925.
Looking ahead, what are your future aspirations for Stuart Lochhead Sculpture?
We have recently opened a gallery in Old Bond Street, designed by Kodai & Associates of Kyoto and Zurich. We would like the gallery to be a platform to showcase the best in European Sculpture, and to be the place that collectors and museum curators from all over the world feel they need to come and visit when they are in London. The gallery aesthetic is a blend of the contemporary and traditional, overlaid with a touch of Japanese refinement.
To find out more about Stuart Lochhead Sculpture, click here.
