Winter Antiques Show Bows in for 51st Year

NEW YORK CITY

:History is nothing if not about people. And so it seemed especially appropriate that in a year when it honored the 200th birthday of the New-York Historical Society, the Winter Antiques Show was more than ever a colorful pageant of humanity - its hopes, preoccupations and never-ending passion for beauty.

From the magnificent 1796 portrait of a proud Seneca chief by F. Bartoli in "Celebrating Two Centuries of Collecting," the New-York Historical Society loan display, to the intimate Japanese shunga prints tucked discreetly into portfolio stands at Joan Mirviss, likenesses large and small, scrupulously realistic and dreamily evocative were everywhere at the 51st annual show.

The Winter Antiques Show, a benefit for the Eastside Settlement House, opened at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue on January 20, and continued through Sunday, January 30.

Hirschl & Adler Galleries took the lead with flanking pairs of portraits by Ammi Phillips and Ralph Earl. At the opposite entrance to the New York dealers' booth was John Singleton Copley's 1763 "Portrait of Alice Hooper." Set in an enigmatically classical setting, the likeness of the daughter of Robert King Hooper, the wealthiest man in Marblehead, Mass., was on loan to the Boston Atheneum and, later, the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State before the gallery recently acquired it.

Adelson Galleries drew crowds with John Singer Sargent's 91/2- by 103/4-inch charcoal on paper sketch, price on request, of Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, better known to the world as "Madame X." In the once-scandalous full-length portrait of 1884, now at The Metropolitan Museum Art, Sargent endowed his subject with beauty, elegance and fame. In his candid sketch, the socialite comes across as the simple, vulnerable young woman that she really was. Two other portraits, "The Black Sash" by Giovanni Boldini and "Thomas Taylor" by Gilbert Stuart were $1.5 million each.

Illinois dealer Barbara Pollack arose Friday morning to find her charming William Matthew Prior portrait, "Young Girl in A Red Dress Holding A Doll," splashed across The New York Times, where it was reproduced nearly full size.

"You don't know how many people came looking for the painting," said the Americana dealer, who sold the portrait, along with a theorem, an early shirred rug from Maine, a huge compote full of stone fruit, three pieces of tole ware and a J.H. Davis portrait accompanied by a signed and dated birth record, a rare piece of documentation for an artist about whom the facts remain sketchy.

At Thomas Colville Fine Art, a young woman arranged her hair in John White Alexander's circa 1895 oil on canvas portrait, 393/4 by 22 inches, and Rembrandt Peale's sultry "Woman in a Turban," circa 1845, beckoned collectors at Schwarz Gallery of Philadelphia.

Hill-Stone, Inc, centered its display on "Two Soldiers," a $60,000 crayon on paper drawing by Pietro Serafi, Studio of Rafael, circa 1520-30. Three Winslow Homer etchings, including "Eight Bells," $175,000, of 1887, joined "American Flamingo," Plate 441 by John J. Audubon, $175,000, at The Old Print Shop.

Standing a heroic 87 inches tall, the French carved limestone figure of "Diana The Huntress," $95,000, loomed over Barbara Israel's display of garden antiques. The figure is modeled after the Roman original in the Louvre.

Elle Shushan, a Philadelphia specialist in portrait miniatures, commissioned New York designer Ralph Harvard to create a lavender silk enclosure inspired by the parlor of George IV's mistress. Anna Claypoole Peale's signed and dated portrait of Ellen Donnell, 1823, a Baltimore aristocrat, was on the right wall with other American miniatures. A tiny enamel on gold portrait of George III, $28,000, by Jeremiah Meyer, RA, signed and dated 1767, was on the left wall with European miniatures.

Unlike most Winter Show exhibitors, Shushan benefits from the influx of Americana collectors at the start of the fair and the arrival of English furniture and paintings dealers at the end, in time for the Old Master pictures and European decorative arts auctions.

"The American side is sold to the wall, literally," Shushan said on Friday, before the start of the show's final weekend.

"We had our best opening day ever," said Taylor Williams, a 23-year Winter Show veteran who, like Shushan, handles both English and American material. "We sold pretty much across the board - a Massachusetts Chippendale slant front desk, an important piece of American silver and a painting." The Chicago dealer offered 45 English enamels from the Ionides Collection. A Rose Bonbonniere, a gift to Nellie Ionides from Queen Mary, was accompanied by a letter written by Queen Elizabeth II's grandmother on Marlborough House stationary in 1948.

While it is a fact that many of the Winter Show's 74 exhibitors start setting treasures aside for next year the day they pack out, it is also true that some objects turn up at the last moment.

"Our best things came to us two weeks before show," Olde Hope Antiques' Pat Bell said, citing a group of Mahantango artifacts and a spectacular James Bard oil on canvas painting, "The Thomas Hunt with The America Following Behind," $1.25 million. Regarded as the ship portraitist's masterpiece, the picture was noteworthy for its brilliant color, fine detail and arresting composition. Sold by the Perth-Amboy Library in 1983, the large canvas is the only known Bard double portrait. It depicts the America returning home after winning the America's cup.

"Many people came to see the picture after hearing about it. I think I've met every Bard owner in the city," Olde Hope's Ed Hild said Friday. The New Hope, Penn., dealers sold a dower chest, a hanging apothecary, a trade sign, a hooked rug decorated with a horse and hearts, all of their Indian baskets, a New Hampshire stand, a miniature blanket box and a spice box by Henry Lapp, a pair of Ruth Bascom paintings, a slew of accessories and the Mahantango furniture and accessories that were ex-collection of Henry Reed.

In fact, no category seemed hotter than American folk art. With Americana Week activities underway by Tuesday, Americana buyers were in town several days before the blizzard warnings began. When the snow arrived Saturday afternoon, most folk art collectors had made their purchases. If not, many decided to wait out the storm, staying in town through the close of Sunday's auctions.

At the Winter Antiques Show in the 1980s, James and Nancy Glazer were known for the flair with which they displayed American folk art and painted furniture. They set the standard again when they returned this year, displaying colorful Pennsylvania artifacts against a vivid teal enclosure that was turned on a diagonal. The Maine dealers got off to a great start, selling a Mahantango cupboard and blanket chest, all of their Moravian and Pennsylvania pottery, a tramp art miniature sideboard, two parade fire hats, a Berks County pencil drawing and a sailor's work basket.

"It's the best of the best," David Schorsch said of the signed J. Howard & Co. "Index" horse weathervane that he and Eileen Smiles sold on opening night. Impressed with the Howard name, the small but perfect vane with beautiful patina and a tousled mane of sheared metal was $275,000. The sculpture set a record when it sold for $25,000 in 1981.

A breathtaking assortment of large-scale folk sculpture animated Fred and Kathryn Giampietro's stand. Highlights included a full-size figure of a Turk. The tobacconist trade figure attributed to Samuel Robb, New York City, 1880, was $550,000.

"We thought it was a fairly gutsy move to bring it. It takes up a lot of real estate," Bob Wilkins said of the painted and decorated sleigh, $28,000, with swan's head finials that he and his wife Suzanne placed front and center in their booth. Found in a barn just five miles from their home in Yarmouth Port, Mass., the sleigh sold on opening night to a member of the Winter Antiques Show's vetting committee. Wilkins and colleague Michelle Beiny Harkins were co-chairs of the committee. Courcier & Wilkins also parted with an Enfield, N.H., Shaker tailoring counter in original red paint, a painted New England Sheraton card table, Shaker boxes, Nantucket baskets, a collection of glass witch balls, and a Mrs Moses B. Russell miniature portrait.

"There may have been less attendance, but we're quite pleased. People seem more interested in formal needlework, meaning silk embroideries instead of samplers," needlework specialist Stephen Huber said Thursday afternoon. The Old Saybrook, Conn., dealer and his wife Carol featured a picnic scene worked by Harriet Clark of New York, circa 1810. The silk on watercolor picture was $55,000.

"Aside from museums, we have no predictable clientele," laughed Titi Halle, owner of Cora Ginsburg, LLC, well-known for costumes and textiles. "I sold to out-of-towners over the first weekend when it snowed. Go figure." Cora Ginsburg's opening night transactions included a crewel embroidered English coverlet, circa 1725-50.

"I've had more interest in military items than Native American art," said William Guthman, who parted with a cannon, ex-collection of Joe Kindig, Jr, as well as three powder horns, a Mexican American War presentation sword, Washington documents and a superb Massachusetts broadside. Of note was a Dutch fowling piece, $125,000, found in upstate New York; two early Ojibwa Great Lakes otter medicine bags; a Valley Forge powder horn dated 1778; and six Iroquois masks.

Throckmorton Fine Art offered a large carved volcanic-stone shaman figure from Costa Rica, 600-900 AD, 33 inches tall. Ontario dealer Donald Ellis sold a Vancouver Island sun mask, circa 1880, and a Crow buffalo robe, circa 1850.

Morning Star Gallery of Santa Fe, N.M., featured classic Taos School paintings. Joseph Henry Sharp's "Scouts," of 1933, was $265,000; E. Martin Henning's luminous "Taos Canyon," 1930, was $475,000. The dealers sold a San Juan Pueblo blackware storage jar on opening night.

"We look for purity of aesthetics and timeless values that resonate over the millennia," said Rupert Wace, a London antiquities dealer who has found an appreciative audience with collectors of contemporary art. Compelling in their simplicity was a late Second to Third Century AD Roman carved marble sarcophagus for a child; a bronze Corinthian helmet, $90,000, dating to the late Seventh Century BC; and an alabaster fragment from the lower half of a royal seated dyad of Ramses II and his queen.

Leigh Keno's opening weekend sales included a Boston Queen Anne settee, $685,000; the Willing-Francis-Fisher Cadwalader piecrust tea table, $395,000; a documented Pennsylvania carved and painted eagle plaque, $95,000, by George Stapf; a pair of gouaches, $270,000; a Rochester, N.Y., stoneware crock decorated with a lion, $38,000, from Keno's personal collection; and a Philadelphia balloon seat side chair, $115,000.

The Boston settee was a major new discovery. Explained the New York dealer, "We believe it's the earliest upholstered settee in America. It turned up at Dawson & Nye about a year ago and no one had seen anything like it. It clearly wasn't English. We've studied it extensively. Microanalysis proved the frame to be maple with yellow pine secondary. We feel the settee was made in the late 1720s when they were just starting to produce turned cabriole legs. The cabinetmaker was probably right off the boat."

"The is the best block front chest of drawers I've ever owned," Wayne Pratt said of the six-figure case piece in the center of his stand. "It's 28 inches wide, very vertical, in pristine condition, has a fabulous molded top and is of the best Santo Domingan mahogany. It was probably made by John Cogswell of Boston." The Woodbury, Conn., dealer had two other block front chests of drawers as well. A Hartford, Conn., example, $245,000, of cherrywood was ex-Stamford, Conn., dealers Avis and Rocky Gardiner.

"It's one of the ten finest pieces of American furniture made in the first half of the Nineteenth Century," Carlie Berlin said of his New York ebonized and gilt bronze-mounted rosewood secretaire a abattant, $475,000, probably by Duncan Phyfe. The cabinet is published inIn Praise of America, American Decorative Arts, 1650-1830, the catalog to the exhibition organized by Wendy Cooper at the National Gallery of Art in 1980. It was made for the prominent New York merchant John Wheeler Leavitt and descended to Philadelphia painter Cecilia Beaux, who left it to her nephew, Cecil Drinker, a Harvard physician.

"At one point on opening night there were six curators from major museums in my booth," said the New York dealer, who said the secretaire would be placed on approval with a client if it did not sell before the fair closed.

'The show's been much slower than usual, but we've done well. We've sold to California, Arizona, Kentucky, Texas and England. The exchange rate is making our inventory very attractive overseas," Gary Young said midweek. The Delaware dealer's clientele includes designers from all over the country and private buyers from affluent suburbs like Greenwich, Conn.

"It's been an unusual show because of the weather and the Presidential inauguration on opening night," Enrique Goytizolo, an English furniture specialist from Fairhaven, Mass., said halfway through. "Our customers arrived from all over the world but many left early because of the snow. Our first two days were very good and then it went quiet."

Jonathan Snellenburg featured a rare George III orrery, $45,000, made in London in 1760. The clock expert, who cut his scholarly teeth at the American Museum of Natural History and at Christie's, also showed a rare American Classical mahogany astronomical regulator clock. The Boston timepiece, $29,000, is signed on the dial by its maker, John Watson, and is dated 1839.

For aficionados of Continental furniture, Mallett had a North Italian gilt pier-mirror, $104,500, surmounted by a lyre and facing griffins; a pair of Italian Baroque scagliola console tables were $385,000 at Foster Gwinn of San Francisco; and a Dutch walnut bureau bookcase of circa 1710-20 was $95,000 at Dillingham, also from California.

"Jewelry has been selling for us," said Peter Schaffer of A La Vieille Russie. Across the aisle, Chinese art expert Andrew Chait pointed out a rare pair of blue and white porcelain Meiping baluster vases with imperial five-clawed Lung dragons emerging from the sea. The Kangxi vases dated to the late Seventeenth Century. China trade pictures dealer Martyn Gregory of London showcased a large view of the Hongs at Canton, $280,000, circa 1790. An exquisite Japanese two-fold screen, one of a pair, $68,000, signed Seisei Shuitsu, ornamented Joan Mirviss's center wall.

"We've sold three Tiffany lamps," said Washington, D.C., dealer Geoffrey Diner, who featured a Tiffany cobweb lamp like one in the loan show. "With less than a handful of these known, it's remarkable that there are two on this floor within a hundred feet of each other."

Among the show's other proto-modernists, the Fine Arts Society of London offered Walter Sickert's oil on canvas view of Venice's beloved Santa Maria della Salute, $850,000, and a Pugin bench, $150,000. Historical Design of New York City unveiled Charles Greene's own architectural cabinet. Inlaid with bits of Tiffany glass, it dated to 1907.

The Winter Antiques Show's pageantry was in full flower at the Thursday evening preview benefiting East Side House Settlement. Among the thousand guests that evening was show chairman Arie Kopelman and his wife, Coco; honorary vice-chairman Oscar de la Renta; Louise Mirrer, president of the New-York Historical Society; Mayor Michael Bloomberg; socialites Ivana Trump, Amy Fine Collins, Nina Griscom and Susan Fales-Hills; East Side House Settlement staff and dozens of the young beneficiaries of the charity's programs.