George Luks Painting Headlines Phillips-Selkirk Missouri Sale

"The Guitar," by George B. Luks, sold to an East Coast telephone bidder for $109,250.

CLAYTON, MO. - Phillips-Selkirk held its final auction for the year on December 1 and 2 which included a collection of Continental and American paintings before a packed house at 7447 Forsyth Boulevard.

The auction - with more than 700 lots of Continental, American, English and Asian furniture, silver, porcelain, paintings, bronzes, tapestries, decorative art, ivories, miniatures and Oriental carpets -totaled $1,291,904.

A collection of American Western art was offered, which included works by William H. D. Koerner, Robert Wood, Porfirio Salinas, Olin H. Travis, and Joe Grandee. Interest in these Western scenes, primarily from a Texas collector, created active telephone bidding from the Southwest. Two of the Koerner paintings sold for $32,200 and $23,000 respectively.

A mixed media on paper and board by Jamie Wyeth, "My Chicken Transports," dated 1982, sold at its high estimate for $66,125 to a Midwestern telephone bidder.

An oil painting by George Benjamin Luks (American, 1867-1933), entitled "The Guitar," was a portrait of the artist's brother, Dr Will Luks, with his son seated on his lap playing the guitar. Dated 1908 and measuring 28 1/4 by 29 inches in size, the painting sold for $109,250 to an East Coast telephone bidder.

The painting was acquired directly from the collection of Arthur F. Egner, (founder of the Newark Museum) by descent through the family to the present owner and was exhibited in 1934 at the Newark Museum of Newark, N.J. George Luks studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later at the Dusseldorf Academy. He traveled through Europe in the 1890s where he was influenced by works of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, artists whose use of chiaroscuro and bold, gestural strokes influenced his own technique.

The Continental paintings department offered an oil painting of a French street scene, "Café de la Paix" by Edouard Leon Cortes (French, 1882-196), 20 1/4 by 40 inches, which sold for $97,750, above its estimate of $40/50,000. A Venice canal scene by Italian artist Rubens Santoro, 22 by 17 inches, sold for $51,750 to an absentee bidder from England.

Philadelphia Chippendale sofa, $58,650.

An American Chippendale period mahogany sofa, Philadelphia, circa 1770, brought the attention of many serious bidders. Requests were pouring in for condition reports and detail photographs of the frame, which caused Mark Howald, executive vice-president at Phillips-Selkirk, to slowly dissect the sofa. The final closing telephone bid was $58,650, well above the $30/35,000 presale estimate.

A Francois Linke (1855-1946) dressing table in the Louis XVI-style with gilt bronze mounted tulipwood sold right at its high presale estimate at $12,650 to an in-house bidder.

Another featured item was an antique English mahogany and satinwood breakfront bookcase ($7/9,000) that sold at $20,125 to a Midwestern bidder in the audience.

Two offerings of silver, one Continental and one American, doubled their catalogue pre-sale estimates. A large French Christofle plated silver and gilt centerpiece cast in the rococo style of an allegorical figure group of a feasting couple with musical instruments, marked, circa mid-late Nineteenth Century, (height 22 inches, length 26 inches), sold to an East Coast telephone bidder for $15,237.

A New Orleans bidder purchased an American sterling silver six-piece coffee and tea service, probably Stieff, with an approximate silver weight of 235 troy ounces, for $15,870.