COPAKE, N.Y. — Copake Auction’s annual New Year’s Day sale saw its top price of the day cross the block very early in the auction on Monday, January 1.

After a handful of nice Oriental rugs, Lot 10 hit the block in the form of a landscape, “Mountain Lake,” attributed to Sanford Robinson Gifford from a senior gallerist at Vose Galleries in 1972 when it acquired the work from an upstate New York collection. The unsigned painting at the time was attributed to Casilear but the gallery reattributed it as a Gifford and sold it as such to the collector who consigned it years later to Copake.

Estimated at $2/3,000, the painting soared quickly in price to hammer at $30,000 ($35,100 including a 17 percent buyer’s premium).

A complete report on the auction will appear in a future edition.