Ten phones were mustered for a dark picture described in the catalog merely as “painter standing beside a canvas depicting cupid.” It took everyone by surprise at Northeast Auctions when it brought $376,500 during the gallery’s May 21-23 sale.

Two collectors also wanted an elegant, nine-foot-tall gilded bronze figure of Diana that they drove to $222,500 against its estimated $15/25,000. The figure, after Augustus St Gaudens, was poised daintily atop a ball holding a fancifully formed bow and was made at the Roman Bronze Works in New York for the garden terrace at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum at Williamsburg.

A full report of the sale will appear in a future issue.

-FSM