A 400-year-old bouquet steals the show at Frieze Week in London
A bouquet painted more than 400 years ago is the early headline sale of Frieze Week in London.
Hauser & Wirth, the international gallery with spaces in London, New York and Hong Kong, sold Jan Brueghel the Elder's 'Still Life of Flowers in a Stoneware Vase' for US$6.58 million. The figure was reported by ARTnews as the lead sale from the Frieze London openings. The gallery included the work in its Frieze Masters 2026 presentation, the fair section devoted to historic art.
The gallery dates the panel to about 1607–1608, according to Hauser & Wirth. Its viewing-room page describes irises, tulips, fritillaria, roses and narcissi crowded into a stoneware vase against a dark background. The format rewards close looking. Viewers read each petal one by one.
Frieze London, the contemporary-art fair, and Frieze Masters, its sister fair for older art, run side by side in London's Regent's Park on 14–18 October 2026, according to Frieze. Together they bring together almost 300 galleries from 48 countries and regions. For anyone new to the week, that is the basic map: new work in one tent, historic work in the other, with crowds moving between them.
This year's edition also includes new curated sections and gallery debuts, Frieze says. Curated sections, where an invited curator selects works around a theme rather than leaving each dealer to choose alone, are often the easiest way in for first-time visitors. Debuts mean galleries showing at the fairs for the first time.
Old Masters, a trade term for European paintings made before about 1800, rarely lead conversation during a week built around living artists. Art consultant Hugo Nathan addressed that gap in Frieze's article 'The Young Blood in Old Masters', which discusses the relative absence of young collectors for such works. The piece asks why buyers under 40 have been slower to come forward. No single answer fits every collector.
Auctions are running alongside the tents. Bonhams, the London auction house, scheduled its 20th and 21st Century Art sales for 15 and 16 October to coincide with Frieze Week. The timing is deliberate. Collectors already in London for the fairs can bid in the saleroom without an extra trip.
Fair sales work differently from auctions. There is no auctioneer, no public hammer price, the bid the auctioneer closes on, before fees. A dealer and a buyer agree a figure, and details often emerge later through press reports.
What makes this stand out is the swap in expectations. Frieze built its name on the new. This time the most talked-about price tag, on first reported figures, belongs to flowers painted when Shakespeare was still writing. Old paint, fresh week.
