Leading the Important Americana sale with a $1,016,000 result was the McMichael Tilghman Family “Acme of Perfection” tea table that sold to a private collector bidding online ($800,000-1.2 million).
Review & Onsite Photos by Madelia Hickman Ring; Photos Courtesy Sotheby’s
NEW YORK CITY — In January 2023, Sotheby’s tried a new sales format where it offered Native American works of art, American art and American books and manuscripts alongside American furniture and folk art. The strategy proved popular, and the house did the same thing again January 19-23, offering American, Western American art, a single owner collection of Hudson River School art and Native American art in a series of live or online sales to compliment its offerings of American furniture, folk art, Chinese export, prints and silver. The house brought in designers Thom Browne and Corey Damen Jenkins to help curate the preview and discuss particular items that resonated with them. An additional twist to the week — now dubbed “Visions of America” — was a sale of about 175 lots of American whiskey and nearly 40 lots of couture clothing-designer-donated pieces in an auction created in partnership between Sotheby’s and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) to raise funds for the CFDA Foundation.
A 16-lot auction of fine manuscript and printed Americana, featuring documents connected with such notables, including John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, was scheduled to take place on January 29. As an outlier, results from that sale are not included in this review though highlights will be published in Antiques and The Arts Weekly once they are available.
At press time, the values of sold lots from all concluded sales totaled $17,453,548.
A small but dedicated group of Americana bidders came to the live Important Americana sale on Saturday morning.
In recent years, Sotheby’s American furniture and decorative arts department, under the direction of Erik Gronning, has landed several single-owner sales that required many sessions spread over a few days of sales. With no such opportunities materializing, Gronning opted to present about 75 lots of the best of Chinese export, silver, prints, American furniture and folk art in a live sale that took place on Saturday morning, January 20. Remaining items in those categories were presented in an online-only sale. The combined total for those two sales was $4,059,428. Sotheby’s press office noted that nearly nine percent of bidders in the live Important Americana sale were new to the category compared to the nearly 11 percent of those bidding in the online auction.
“I’m very content, honestly very happy with how we did,” reported Gronning. “‘Visions of America’ was very successful for the clients and is a great foundation for building future programs. Adding whiskey and fashion brought in a totally new demographic and dynamism — I haven’t felt such energy in a really long time. It’s important to tell the stories of these pieces in a way that people can relate to and I think they really responded this time.”
Leading the Important Americana auction with a result of $1,016,000 was the McMichael-Tilghman family scalloped tilt-top tea table that featured carving attributed to the Garvan High Chest carver of Philadelphia, circa 1755. Dubbed the “Acme of Perfection” by William MacPherson Horner in his essential 1935 text, Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture, the table additionally caught the eye of Browne, whose inclusion of it in a video he did prior to the sale gave it a little more appeal and star power. A private collector, bidding on the phone with Gronning, prevailed over furniture scholar and advisor, Luke Beckerdite, who was bidding in the room. First offered at auction in 2008, when it sold for $1,833,000, the table was then purchased by Erving and Joyce Wolf.
Gary Sullivan paid $406,400 for this Philadelphia Chippendale carved mahogany tall case clock ($250/500,000).
Achieving a second-place finish at $406,400 was a Chippendale tall case clock made in Philadelphia circa 1775 with musical works by Paul Rimbault of London and carving attributed to Martin Jugiez. It stood more than 9 feet tall and had been exhibited in the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Dealer Gary Sullivan, bidding from the room, outbid collector Linda Kaufman, who was sitting a few rows ahead of him.
A Chippendale five-legged serpentine-front games table from New York, circa 1765, played to a third-highest finish at $279,400. The table was another example the catalog described as “one of the masterpieces of American Rococo furniture design” that possesses “a proportion, grace and delicacy seldom found on others of its type,” …it “is exemplary for its sophisticated curvilinear form overlaid with exceptional rococo carving.” Gronning confirmed that it was purchased by a private collector who is new to the category and who was bidding online.
Northshore, Mass., dealer Clarke Pearce, bidding in the room, underbid the Garbisch family Federal tambour desk and bookcase, which was attributed to John Seymour and/or Thomas Seymour in Boston and dated to circa 1800. Considered an early example of the desk and bookcase form, it relates to examples at the MFA Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A phone bidder took it to $177,800.
This Federal tambour desk and bookcase, attributed to John and Thomas Seymour of Boston, is going to a new home for $177,800. Provenance to Col Edgar and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch helped contributed to interest in it ($80/120,000).
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., added the Phippen Family Federal fire screen to its collection for $35,560. Dr R. Ruthie Dibble, the museum’s Robert N. Shapiro curator of American decorative art, was in the audience and shared with Antiques and The Arts Weekly that the screen was the first piece of shell-inlaid furniture to enter the museum’s collection.
In its nod to Outsider art, Sotheby’s included seven painted leather works by African American artist Winfred Rembert (1945-2021). One buyer, a private collector bidding with Americana specialist Caroline Tamposi, prevailed to buy three of them, including the one that fetched the most: his untitled (Eleven on the Chain Gang), which earned $215,900.
Other highlights of the live sale would include the Asa Plummer long land pattern musket ($31,750), a Gorham silver and enamel Oriental-style coffee pot that was decorated in Japan in 1897-98 ($50,800), and a late Nineteenth Century large Chinese export silver flagon, Hung Chong, Canton and Shanghai ($63,500). Another piece that Thom Browne selected as one of his favorites in the sale — a Chinese export “Hong” punch bowl, Qing dynasty and Qianlong period, 1780-1785, that relates to several examples in museum collections, brought $88,900 from British dealer James Rolleston who was exhibiting at The Winter Show and was bidding in the room.
The top lot of Chinese export offered in the live Important Americana auction was this Chinese export “Hong” punch bowl, late Eighteenth Century, that sold to James Rolleston, bidding in the room, for $88,900 ($60/80,000).
Though it was offered without reserve in the important Americana online sale, top-lot honors went to a hand-colored aquatint, engraving and etching of a great northern diver or loon by R. Havell after John James Audubon, which sold above its high estimate, for $25,400. Another Havell after Audubon hand-colored aquatint, engraving and etching, this time of the ivory-billed woodpecker, flew to $15,240.
Furniture offered online reached its apex in a Federal gentleman’s secretary from Essex County, Mass., circa 1800, that had been exhibited and published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974. It found a new home with a buyer who took it to $27,940. A dealer bidding online paid $15,240 for a rare miniature reverse serpentine chest from Massachusetts, circa 1785, that had provenance to both Charles W. Lyon and Col Edgar and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.
Though there was not much folk art in the live Important Americana sale — the only work, a portrait of Rebecca Harris of Scituate, R.I., attributed to William M.S. Doyle (1769-1828) that brought $38,100 — there were many more opportunities for folk art collectors in the online sale. A needlework sampler made by Mary Davis in 1826 in Canterbury, N.H., that had provenance to sampler scholar Glee Krueger, rose to $7,620. Several carvings from the Guennol collection that were being sold by Robin Bradley Martin were offered, with a top price of $24,130 realized for a loon decoy attributed to Harry Wass, Addison, Maine, 1910. A few lots from the end of the sale, bidders still had money to play with, and a circa 1847 Baltimore album quilt doubled its high estimate to bring $24,130.
“Green River, Wyoming” by Thomas Moran, 1883, oil on canvas, 13 by 20 inches, was the top lot in the January 19 sale of Western Art and Design from Bar Cross Ranch, Wyoming. It sold for $1,451,500 ($800,000-1.2 million).
American Art
American art collectors had three different sales to shop from, depending on their interests. Western art and design were the focus of the first sale of the Visions of America series, offering approximately 60 lots from Bar Cross Ranch, Wyoming the morning of Thursday, January 19. The auction had a sell-through rate of more than 94 percent and achieved a total of $4,000,390. Thomas Moran’s (1837-1926) luminous “Green River, Wyoming” led the sale with $1,451,500, followed by the $825,500 earned by a sketchbook of drawings made circa 1876 by Etahdeluh Doanmoa (Kiowa, 1856-1888). Rounding out the sale with a $317,500 finish was an Arapaho child’s robe with incised and painted design that dated to the Nineteenth Century.
Later that afternoon, about 75 lots of American art were presented in its Art of America sale, which realized a total of $6,477,576 and was about 78 percent sold by lot. Two lots shared the highest price of $1,633,000: Edmonia Lewis’ (1844-1907) “Hiawatha’s Marriage,” and a portrait of George Washington, painted circa 1795 by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), that had been extensively documented, published and exhibited. Achieving $762,000 was Winslow Homer’s (1836-1910), which was being sold by a Northeastern institution.
“Northern Marsh: Sunset” by Martin Johnson Heade, circa 1880s, oil on canvas, 8 by 16 inches, was the top lot in “The Hudson River School in Focus: Property from the Friedman Collection” sale. It made $381,000 ($100/150,000).
An online sale of less than 40 lots of Hudson River School works from the collection of Maryann and Al Friedman closed the afternoon of Friday, January 20. Just two lots were passed, achieving a sell-through rate of more than 97 percent and a total of $1,609,455. Bidders pushed the high bar to $381,000, for Martin Johnson Heade’s (1819-1904) “Northern Marsh: Sunset.” Another of Heade’s marsh paintings — “Florida Marsh, Dawn” — also appealed to bidders and it sold for $279,400. Both of the Heade marsh paintings had been acquired from the artist by seminal Florida collector, Henry Morrison Flagler. “Andean Sketch” by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) achieved a third-place finish at $177,800.
Kayla Carlsen, Sotheby’s head of American art, commented: “I am very pleased with the overall sale series. We experienced outstanding sell-through rates for single-owner collections due in part to the integration of previews and experiential elements. The market responded accordingly to the structure of the week, namely to the refreshed branding and activations spanning three floors of gallery space. It was exciting to welcome so many new bidders and buyers to celebrate the breadth of Americana at Sotheby’s.”
A long-term exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum and publication in Wayne A. Thompson and Eugene S. Meieran’s California Indian Basketry: Ikons of the Florescence (2021) were among the desirable elements of this 11¼-inch diameter Yokuts polychrome bottleneck basket jar by Louisa (Lasyeh) Francisco. It was the highest lot of nearly 30 in the Native American art sales and realized $63,500 ($50/70,000).
Native American Art
Native American works were presented in an online sale that closed on January 19 and featured 29 lots; with slightly less than 60 percent of the lots trading hands successfully, the sale added another $263,525 to the week’s total. A Yokuts polychrome bottleneck basket jar by Louis (Lasyeh) Francisco (Bancalache Yokuts, 1857-1953) achieved the sale’s highest price of $63,500.
Alexander Grogan, head of Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, reported, “The recent auctions during Visions of America marked our second year of presenting Native American Art during the traditional sale season for American Art. We saw strong participation both from seasoned collectors and new bidders.”
American Whiskey
One of the newest categories to be sold was American spirits in its January 20 “Whisky & Whiskey: America’s Finest Bourbon and Rye Through the Decades.” The auction achieved $950,321 with just one of the 170 lots passing. A case of 12 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle’s 20-year-old Family Reserve single barrel bourbon, hand-selected in 2007, topped off the sale finishing at $162,500 and exceeding expectations.
Zev Glesta, Sotheby’s specialist of spirits, reflected, “This weekend represented a great success for the market and a major milestone for Sotheby’s as our first ever American Whiskey evening sale. We look forward to building on this result off the heels of last year’s record-breaking year.”
This floral gown, worn to the Met Gala in 2021 by Anna Wintour, was made by Oscar de la Renta in 2021 and sold for $20,320. It was the highest price achieved in the white-glove SFDA Defining American Style sale on January 23.
American Fashion
Concluding the week with a final 37 lots focused on contemporary couture by CFDA members, the live sale on January 23 stitched up a final $93,853; most of the lots were unreserved and all lots sold. A floral patterned dress made in 2021 by Oscar de la Renta that was worn by Vogue editor Anna Wintour to the 2021 Met Gala brought the highest price: $20,320.
“The collaboration of CFDA with Sotheby’s for this unprecedented auction of major American fashion pieces was a natural synergy. The auction items are significant pieces of American fashion history in their range and craftsmanship and in the unique stories they tell,” announced Steven Kolb, chief executive officer, Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For more information, www.sothebys.com.
