– Nearly 2,000 lots of paintings, Americana, Victoriana, jewelry and folk art were sold during an action-packed, three-day auction presented by James Julia during his annual event at the Samoset Resort this past week.

The auction, which took place August 20-22, was subject to a great deal of action from the capacity crowd and telephones bidders with numerous hefty prices paid throughout the sale.

The two highest-priced rdf_Descriptions came on the third day of the auction, with a Walt Kuhn painting of a clown selling first at $149,500 after a battle between nine telephone bidders, three of whom were active till the end.

The Kuhn was thought to be a preliminary painting for work that recently sold at Sotheby’s for record price of $1.1 million. The painting carried an interesting history, having been bequeathed from Vera Kuhn to the Sloan Kettering Institute, where it eventually wound up in its thrift shop and was purchased less than two years ago for $2,500.

The server was called a “masterpiece” by Julia’s American antiques specialist Bill Gage, who further commented that it was undoubtedly “one of Roux’s finest works.”

As with the Kuhn lot, every phone in the hall, including numerous cellular phones, was in use as the server crossed the auction block. It opened for bidding at $15,000 and moved rapidly in $5,000 increments all the way to a final selling price of $189,750 (prices include the 15 percent buyer’s premium charged).

A complete review of the auction will appear in a future issue.