HAYDEN, IDAHO – The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction went virtual for its fall sale on November 14. Specializing in Western and sporting art, it was the auction house’s inaugural online sale. Featured artists included Harvey Dunn, David Shepherd, Edgar Payne, Olaf C. Seltzer, E. William Gollings, Porfiro Salinas, Philip R. Goodwin, Gunnar Widforss, James Kenneth Ralston and others.
The sale also featured, however, a one-owner collection of early Alaskan artists Sydney Laurence, Eustace Paul Ziegler and Jules Dahlager. And the highlight of the sale was Sydney Laurence’s “Alaskan Halibut Fisher,” circa 1928, that saw lively bidding and sold for $23,800 against an estimate of $10/15,000. Measuring 16 by 20 inches, the oil on canvas captures the essence of folk engaged in their often solitary lives in the northern wilderness.
Sydney Mortimer Laurence (1865-1940) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and studied at the Art Students League of New York and exhibited regularly by the late 1880s. He and his wife traveled to England, settling in 1889 in the English artists’ colony of St Ives, Cornwall from 1889 to 1898. Over the next decade he exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and was included in the Paris Salon in 1890, 1894 and 1895, winning an award in 1894. He abandoned his family and came to Alaska in 1903 or 1904. For information, 208-772-9009 or www.cdaartauction.com.
