Collectors and dealers gravitated to the Center of New Hampshire on October 25, drawn irresistibly by the very good estate materials offered at Northeast Auctions’ fall sale. Dealers were well represented, but collectors and retail buyers were particularly strong. Auctioneer Ron Bourgeault said after the sale that he was impressed by the strength and consistency of retail bidding, noting that this sale was considerably stronger than last year’s fall auction. This year’s event was also considerably more cheerful and cheering.
“Hillside Farm,” an oil on canvas by Pennsylvania Impressionist Edward Willis Redfield, was the highlight when it sold to a dealer on the phone for $221,500. The New Hope scene, a late winter view along the Delaware River with patches of snow on the ground, bore a label identifying it as number 178 in the artist’s 1959 inventory and number 104 in his estate inventory. The New Jersey family that owned the painting bought it from the artist’s estate just after his 1965 death. Redfield destroyed hundreds of the paintings in his studio in 1947, sparing only those he felt were worthy, and he stopped painting in 1953.
The painting had an exhibit history that included the Newman Galleries in Philadelphia in 1968, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1918, the Rosenbach Galleries in Philadelphia, also in 1918, and 1905 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
A 1902 portrait by William Merritt Chase of the young Agnes Beatrice Claflin brought $44,460. The painting was originally a full-length view, painted on Long Island, and was cut down at some unknown time. The subject became Lady Gosford on her second marriage in 1928 to the fifth Earl of Gosford. An absentee bid took “Come Dawn,” a serene coastal scene by Frederick Judd Waugh, for $29,250.
A portrait of a gentleman in a feathered hat was thought to be the banker Crozert, and was attributed to a follower of the Seventeenth Century French baroque artist Pierre Mignard; it attracted $23,400. The stretchers were stamped indistinctly “Denis Tirard &ert, 24 March 1914/ 119 Rue de la & Paris” The painting was estimated at $1,5/2,500.
The high lot of a group of Old Master drawings from the estate of a Cambridge, Mass., academic was the early pen and ink studies of lions, deer and other animals that brought $22,230. The reverse bore an old label of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. From another collection, a drawing of an angel appearing to two men by Venetian artist Francisco Fontebasso went to a phone buyer for $7,899.
A set of six George II carved walnut side chairs with shaped crests and vasiform splats and shell carved knees realized $63,180, against the estimated $12/18,000. The chairs were attributed to the London maker Giles Grendey. Each of the chairs was branded with a tiny crown above the initials “J.L.” Grendey had two apprentices with those initials: James Ludford and Joseph Lawed. They came from a New York collection and are headed back to England.
From the same collection came an English William and Mary musical tall case clock made in London by French Huguenot Claudius du Chesne with elaborate marquetry inlay, a handsomely engraved brass dial and a musical element. The clock, whose maker worked in Soho in London between 1693 and 1730, brought $39,700.
A 93-inch Southern Hepplewhite cherry linen press with graceful diamond and oval inlay brought out eight phone bidders, who drove it to $60,840 against the $8/12,000 estimate. The linen press was purchased from Israel Sack as a Virginia work but research by Northeast’s Derin Bray suggests a Kentucky origin. It came from a New York collection and went to a collector.
Bidding on a Boston Hepplewhite mahogany tambour secretary attributed to John and Thomas Seymour opened at $14,000 and raced to $46,800. Catalog notes indicate that the desk was rediscovered recently and enumerates the characteristics that identify it as Seymour work. It had passed through the New York shop of dealer Charles Woolsey Lyon sometime in the early Twentieth Century.
A pair of New York or Philadelphia classical mahogany side chairs with boulle work stringing on the crest, the slat carved with a shell and foliage and sinuous giltwood dolphin stiles and side rails, drew $28,080 after a competition between two phone bidders. A pair of New York classical mahogany side chairs with carved and canted crests and carved and scrolled supports garnered $19,890, and an 86-inch classical mahogany daybed, possibly a Boston work, carved with a rolled crest and cornucopia and rope decoration sold for $11,700. A Boston classical rosewood card table on a lyre-form base was attributed to John and Thomas Seymour and also fetched $11,700.
The Barton family tall clock signed by Aaron Willard, and having a painted dial with moon phase and a second hand, went to a phone buyer for $52,650. The clock came from the collection of the late New Hampshire dealers Winthrop L. and Margaret Scott Carter. The collection was sold in 132 lots by the family trust that stipulated a public auction where family members were free to bid but required to pay the hammer price and buyer’s premium. It was Scotty Carter’s express wish that those objects not left to their children be sold by their good friend, Northeast Auctions’ Ron Bourgeault. Family members filled a couple of rows of seats and bid actively on items that had important personal associations for them.
The Carters’ decoy collection will be sold next summer by another longtime friend, Ted Harmon, who, with his wife Judy, operates Decoys Unlimited in Barnstable, Mass.
A Massachusetts Chippendale mahogany bombe slant lid desk had four graduated drawers, turned feet and a fitted interior with 16 shaped and fan-carved drawers. It came from the Carter collection and sold for $24,570. It had strong Northshore connections: an inscription on the back of the bottom drawer read, “Repaired by Israel E. Pulcifer Nov. 1804” (Pulcifer being a Northshore family), and another on the back of the third drawer read, “Repaired by Joseph Conant 1850 Beverly, Mass.”
A set of six Chippendale mahogany side chairs with Israel Sack provenance brought $12,870, and a Dunlap School Chippendale figured maple slant lid desk elicited $10,530.
An early tin 56-tube candle mold was imposing and realized $5,850. Two Andrew Wyeth watercolors, one of the view off Caldwell’s Island, Maine, and the other a scene of a Chadds Ford, Penn., mill, came from a private collection but failed to sell. Speaking several days after the auction, Bourgeault said negotiations for a private sale are ongoing. He observed that Wyeth’s relatively recent death (in January) had resulted in a number of his works coming to market.
Objects from the Dyer family, whose ancestors were William and Mary Dyer, Quakers banished from Massachusetts in 1638 who were subsequently among the founders of Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay, later the colony of Rhode Island, were the subject of great interest. Dyers were active in Rhode Island politics for more than two centuries. A Rhode Island Federal mahogany and figured maple diminutive settee, circa 1810, was branded “E. Dyer” and realized $43,290. Elisha Dyer and Company were commission merchants in early Nineteenth Century Providence. A nearly identical example is pictured in American Antiques from the Israel Sack Collection , Volume III.
The framed Eighteenth Century oil on canvas Dyer family coat of arms inscribed “Capt. Dyer” sold for $16,380. As he hammered it down, Bourgeault said it was presumed to have been painted by John Gore, a Boston carpet and coach painter active in the late 1700s, or one of his sons. Such works in oil are seen rarely.
Seven phone bidders chased a Rhode Island Queen Anne tiger maple highboy from the Dyer family, made with removable legs, which were missing, to $8,658.
A Massachusetts Federal mahogany and curly maple card table with Israel Sack provenance elicited $10,530, while a Massachusetts Federal mahogany and flame birch card table that had once been part of the Nicholson collection went for $9,360.
A Massachusetts †Salem or Marblehead †Chippendale mahogany breakfast table on ball and claw feet was branded “I.S.” It also had Sack provenance and realized $11,115. A New England Queen Anne wing chair brought $5,850.
In the original red paint, an early New England apothecary chest had 11 drawers and a nicely shaped apron. It realized $7,605. A New York Hepplewhite mahogany sideboard with inlay attracted $10,513 from an absentee bidder.
A George III armorial silver center bowl and stand by John Wakelin and Robert Garrard of London and a pair of silver sweetmeat dishes by John Wakelin and William Taylor were marked and numbered and fetched $14,040 on the phone. A George III silver tray made in London by William Fountain was engraved with the crest of a shop and went to an absentee bidder for $5,558.
An early Nineteenth Century Staffordshire pearlware “Tithe Pig” Toby jug stood 10 inches and was formed as a farmer with two piglets and a basket of eggs. It attracted $10,530, while a Canada goose decoy in flight by A. Elmer Crowell with the rectangular brand was $7,020.
More than 50 lots of jewelry sold at the beginning of the sale, included a glittering Tiffany diamond and platinum ring with a 3.40-carat Asscher-cut diamond, flanked by a row of small diamonds, that sold for $55,575.
All prices reported include the buyer’s premium. For information, www.northeastauctions.com or 603-433-8400.
