“Female Nude with Mask,” Arthur Beecher Carles, $46,000.

“Spring Flowers,” Reuven Rubin, $43,700.

American and European Paintings Auction at Freeman’s Funds Scholarship

PHILADELPHIA, PA. – The first and third floor galleries at Freeman’s saw some of their largest crowds ever this past Sunday, December 10, for Alasdair Nichol’s third fine paintings sale at America’s oldest auction house. The first session showcased 104 lots of American and European Paintings including work by Andrew Wyeth, Emilio Grau-Sala, Elling William Gollings and others.

The second session, focusing on the work of Artists of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, helped to fund the new Samuel T. Freeman Memorial Scholarship.

A standing-room-only crowd in the first floor gallery was supplemented by an extraordinary high number of phone bidders and left bids, resulting in a number of top and record prices. Ninety-one percent of the lots sold, with more than half selling at above the high estimate and the final results of the sale, including buyers premium, surpassed $430,000.

The star lot of the Academy sale was “Nude with Mask” by Arthur Beecher Carles, the 40 and 36 inches oil on canvas sold on the phone for $46,000 against an estimate of $25/ 40,000.

Two working studies by Violet Oakley for her commissions for the Pennsylvania State Capitol, executed in oil paint over a printed base, the depictions of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln sold for $18,400 and $28,750 respectively. A gouache and graphite sketch on paper by Charles Demuth inscribed “Fathers Day,” sold at 10 times its high estimate for a final price of $13,800.

The day’s first session was equally well attended, as a large crowd pushed the capacity of the third floor gallery and many phone bidders participated from around the world. The sell-through rate of 91 percent matched the Academy sale and the final results of slightly more than $540,000 brought the day’s total to $974,500.

Two paintings tied for top lot at $43,700. The first – “Spring Flowers,” an oil on canvas by Twentieth Century Israeli artist Reuven Rubin – was consigned by a private Philadelphia collector who was a friend of the artist. The bidder from the trade paid the same price for “Tall in the Saddle,” an oil on canvas by the celebrated American painter of western scenes Bill Gollings estimated at $10/ 15,000.

The Freeman Memorial Scholarship of $10,000 will be awarded to an outstanding student at the Academy entering his or her second and final year of graduate study.