: Provenance and pedigree contributed to sales of $2,017,902 at
Skinner's recent auction of American furniture and decorative
arts. Fresh to the block was a well-known collection of Currier
& Ives lithographs, assembled by Dr Arthur Localio of
Deerfield, Mass., over three decades with the help of several
highly regarded prints dealers. Choice Massachusetts furniture
and folk painting, consigned by descendants of their original
owners, were another draw.
The Sunday morning sale attracted buyers from Maine to
Pennsylvania to the fashionable Park Plaza salesroom that
Skinner's executive vice president Stephen L. Fletcher says is
slowly but surely developing a strong retail following.
Currier & Ives
In 1932, in the depths of the Depression, Harry Shaw Newman of
The Old Print Shop in New York and Harry T. Peters, author of the
pioneering two-volume work Currier & Ives: Printmaker to
The American People (Doubleday, Doran & Company,
1929-1931) invited seven colleagues to join them at a dinner
party at Peter's apartment. The purpose of the gathering was to
pick the 50 Currier & Ives large-folio lithographs out of
approximately 200. The compilation, known ever after as "The Best
50" and more recently updated as "The New Best 50,"
published by the American Historical Print Collectors Society in
the late 1980s, has guided collectors of these beloved American
views for seven decades.
Among those intent on owning the best of "The Best" was Dr Arthur
Localio, a New York neurosurgeon who was a client of The Old
Print Shop and Kennedy Galleries from the 1950s on. By the time
of his death in 2000, Localio had acquired 48 out of 50 of the
large-folio works. Only the Museum of the City of New York had a
more extensive collection, says Harry Shaw Newman's grandson,
Robert.
On February 22, Skinner auctioned Localio's Currier & Ives
prints (furniture from the doctor's historic home in Deerfield,
Mass., will be sold by the Boston firm in June.) The liquidation,
the most important Currier & Ives sale since Skinner featured
the Malcolm Burroughs collection in 2000, tallied an impressive
$568,230 on 64 lots and achieved what is believed to be a new
record auction price paid at auction.
The event attracted major dealers and seasoned collectors of the
mid-Nineteenth Century views, published by Nathaniel Currier from
the 1830s and, after 1856, in association with his brother-in-law
James M. Ives. It also drew newcomers to the genre. Bill Mayer, a
Greenwich, Conn., collector who frequents the major New York and
New England salesrooms but had never purchased a Currier &
Ives, left with a handful of examples.
The record bid, $76,375 ($8/12,000), was for "The American
National Game of Baseball, Grand Match for the Championship at
the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N.J.," a popular but uncommon print
of 1866. Bidding on behalf of a client, the buyer was Robert
Newman.
As Newman explained, "The title says it all, as Currier &
Ives titles often do. They were among the first to recognize
baseball as our national sport. This is one of the great early
baseball prints. There are only two or three others from this
period. This one comes up at auction only once every eight or ten
years, though a record price is likely to bring more out of the
woodwork."
Localio had pursued both "The American National Game of Baseball"
and "The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix" for most of his life. He
was offered "A Tight Fix" in the late 1950s for a few thousand
dollars, but didn't have the money to buy it. It cost him many
multiples more when he was finally able to acquired it years
later.
Localio's "Tight Fix" fetched $44,063 ($15/25,000) from a phone
bidder, less than the record $63,000 paid for a different copy of
the same image at Sotheby's in 1993. The buyer of Lacalio's
"Tight Fix" also claimed "American Forest Scene. Maple Sugaring,"
1856, $19,975; "The Rocky Mountains. Emigrants Crossing the
Plains," 1866, $21,150; and "The Great Fire at Chicago, Oct. 8th
1871," 1871, $22,325.
Meted out to other bidders were "The 'Lightening Express' Train,"
1863, $25,850; "The Road - Winter," 1853, $28,850; "Husking,"
1861, $16,450; "Winter In The Country: Getting Ice," 1864,
$17,625; and "Central-Park, Winter. The Skating Pond," 1862,
$21,150.
Massachusetts Furniture
Furniture and paintings from the descendants of original owners
struck a responsive chord with bidders. Leading sales was a
carved mahogany wing chair notable for the emphatic serpentine
crest of its back and its claw feet, raking back legs and turned
stretchers. The chair, which Fletcher first saw in a summer home
in Maine, was made for Boston merchant Theodore Lyman, whose
Waltham, Mass., house, The Vale, became a Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities property in 1951.
"The American National Game of Baseball, Grand Match for the
Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N.J." received a
record bid of $76,375 from its buyer, Robert Newman, of The Old
Print Shop. "The title says it all, as Currier & Ives
titles often do," said Newman.
When SPNEA's excellent laboratory conserved the chair for
Lyman's descendants in 1994, the conservators took special care to
document the chair's condition in an extensive condition report
accompanied by dozens of photographs. Bidders had complete access
to SPNEA's findings. The result was that the chair's crimson show
cover, crafted by SPNEA to match a scrap of original red fabric
found under one nail, survived pre-sale inspection undamaged.
Bidding on the chair, estimated at $40/60,000, opened at $35,000
and proceeded among Northport, Maine, dealer Seth Thayer, a phone
caller and Essex, Mass., dealer Clark Pearce. The volley stopped
at $149,000 when the chair sold to Pearce on behalf of the SPNEA.
"It's a nice example of a Boston Chippendale wing chair and it
has great provenance, along with wonderful stance, serpentine
back and an accretion of old surfaces," said Pearce, pleased with
his purchase.
Pearce also acquired a set of five Chippendale walnut side chairs
with serpentine crest rails, acanthus carved knees and claw feet
for $55,813 ($30/50,000). The chairs came "right out of a house
in eastern Massachusetts," said Fletcher, who, with colleague
Karen Keane, picked up the set on Christmas Eve in his Volvo.
"My guess is that the chairs were made in Essex County, Mass.,"
said Pearce, who admired their unusual raking stance and flared
rear feet, a feature more often found on English chairs.
Among other avidly contested pieces was a circa 1725-35 painted
and joined-paneled maple and pine chest-over-drawer from the
Hatfield/Hadley area. It sold to a phone bidder for $31,725
($4/6,000).
A Hampden, Mass., Queen Anne maple carved high chest brought
$29,375 ($20/25,000) and a North Shore reverse-serpentine
mahogany desk-and-bookcase went for $27,025 ($15/25,000.) Good
buys included a Massachusetts glazed desk and bookcase of about
1825 for $3,819, and an attributed Emmons and Archibald Classical
sideboard, an astute pick at $6,463. Of the more than a half
dozen tall-case clocks for sale, the best was a circa 1800 Aaron
Willard of Boston timepiece. An absentee bidder acquired it for
$31,725 ($20/30,000).
Folk Painting
Massachusetts folk art was another highlight. The rarest offering
was a 15 7/8 by 60 7/8 inch pine overmantel painting on pine that
is thought to have been removed from a house in Framingham,
Mass., in 1840 by Austin Bacon. Appraised by Charles D. Childs of
Goodspeed's Book Shop in Boston for $150 in 1932, the panel,
which is decorated with leaping stags reminiscent of those found
on Boston Fishing Lady needleworks, was exhibited at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1952 and illustrated by
Nina Fletcher Little in American Decorative Wall Painting,
1700-1850, published by the early scholar and collector in
1972.
"The drawing is wonderfully elegant and has a lot of motion, yet
there is a real simplicity to it," said Massachusetts dealer
David Wheatcroft, who bid the work to $82,250 against competition
from the phone. "The oral history is that the panel was covered
by wallpaper. The tiny holes in the surface are heavily oxidized
and the back side shows vertical pit-saw marks, so the physical
evidence dovetails quite well with the history."
"It was a good day for me. I got everything I wanted," added
Wheatcroft, who recently opened a shop in Westborough, Mass., and
left Skinner with three oil on academy board Prior-Hamblen school
paintings. The best, an arresting 22 by 171/2 inch portrait of a
girl in a red dress with a doll and a landscape in the
background, cost him $88,125 ($15/25,000). Two smaller por-traits
of a boy and a girl, the girl signed "Wm M. Prior Boston,"
fetched $11,163 and $19,975.
"All three came out of one family so there is every reason to
think that they were painted by the same person," said
Wheatcroft, enumerating the stylistic details that convinced him
that the portrait was by Prior, not William Kennedy, as others
believed. Whoever painted it, the charming portrait was
exceptionally attractive and in excellent condition.
Rounding out the sale was a small selection of mocha, including a
slip-slashed quart mug, Jonathan Rickard, $2,115; a tea caddy
with a repaired rim, $1,645; and a circa 1830 chamber pot,
$1,410. The sparse textiles offering featured a Philadelphia
house sampler made by Elizabeth Marshall in 1813, $9,400 and a
circa 1850 Baltimore album quilt with three signed blocks,
$11,750. Both sold to phone bidders.
For the average shopper simply looking to furnish a home with
beautiful antiques, there was much to choose from in the $1,000
to $5,000 price range, though little slips went by unnoticed in
this educated audience.
"Even in the middle market there are little gems that bring
pretty good money," said Fletcher, who hoped to win a demilune
card table with tapered legs and scrubbed pine top for himself.
"I left a pretty good bid, but it brought almost $3,500," he
sighed.
A Note from the SPNEA
"The acquisition of the Chippendale carved chair continues
SPNEA's commitment to building collections that relate the
stories of New England's architectural and decorative arts
heritage. The chair highlights the multilayered history of
SPNEA's connection with the Lyman family, which helps explain its
importance. According to family history, this chair belonged to
Theodore Lyman, the first owner of the Lyman Estate, which was
donated to SPNEA by his descendants in 1951. SPNEA's library and
archives contain a Nineteenth Century photograph that shows the
chair in Lyman's grandson's home at 16 Mount Vernon Street,
Boston. The chair was conserved by SPNEA in its conservation labs
in 1993, for the private owner, and careful study at that time
identified its all-original construction.
Decorated with a pastoral scene of leaping stags, this pine
overmantel painting wsa the sale's most intruiging lot. It sold
to Massachusetts dealer David Wheatcroft for $82,250.
The well-documented, original and rare chair is an important
addition to SPNEA's furniture collection, recognized by experts as
among the finest collections of New England furniture anywhere. In
addition to complementing the society's extensive collections
relating to Lyman and his house in Waltham, the acquisition of the
chair adds to SPNEA's holdings of well-documented upholstered
furniture.
SPNEA President and CEO Carl R. Nold stated that in addition to
being an excellent example of an Eighteenth Century easy chair,
"The acquisition demonstrates SPNEA's continued commitment to
collecting and exhibiting extraordinary examples of New England
decorative arts. Our collection of houses, landscapes,
photographs, archival materials and museum objects is the basis
for all of the scholarship, educational programs, tours and
exhibits that we share with the public."
This Boston Chippendale easy chair has a serpentine crest with
shaped wings over outward curving arms. The upholstered frame is
supported on carved cabriole front legs with ball and claw feet,
joined by block and turned stretchers to maple chamfered raking
rear legs. The chair retains its original under-upholstery on the
wings and the back. The red wool damask upholstery is a modern
reproduction based on fiber samples found under the original rose
head nails. The chair will be displayed beginning this summer in
the soon-to-be installed Nathan Tracey bedchamber at SPNEA's
Little Farm in Newbury, Mass. The chamber reflects the lifestyle
of a man who had been one of New England's wealthiest residents,
but lost his money during the Revolutionary War and retired to
Newbury.
Acquisition of the chair was made possible by generous
contributions from six anonymous donors."
For more information visit SPNEA online at www.SPNEA.org.
