This spring landscape by Achille Laugé (French, 1861-1944), oil on canvas, 21 by 27 inches framed, led the sale, earning $20,400 ($8/16,000).
Review by Kiersten Busch
DELRAY BEACH, FLA. — What better place to shop for the upcoming holidays than at a $40 million mansion? Luckily, on December 10, interested bidders were able to do just that at Bill Hood & Sons Art & Antique Auctions’ Important Major Estate sale, where 329 lots from a Jupiter, Fla., mansion crossed the block, including sign Louis Vuitton cabinet pieces, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century furniture, French bronzes, Vienna portrait plates, majolica and antique paintings, among others.
Leading the sale was a landscape by Achille Laugé, which reminded bidders of the hopefulness of spring to come. The oil on canvas, which depicted a spring landscape with birch trees in a pastel palette, was framed in a rococo-style giltwood frame and was signed “A. Laugé” on its lower right corner. The painting bloomed to a fresh $20,400 with premium, surpassing its $8/16,000 estimate. A second painting by Laugé, an untitled landscape from the late Nineteenth Century, also did well, realizing $13,200.
Fine art continued to pique bidders’ interest, with “Tropical Dawn” by Kim Brooks flapping to $9,000. The painting depicted “two keel-billed toucans on a branch deep in the jungle with two monkeys in the background,” according to catalog notes. Housed in a gold frame, the work was signed “Kim Brooks” and dated “2000” on its lower right corner. The lot also included a copy of Africa to the Amazon: The Art and Travels of Kim Brooks by the artist’s husband, Bill Brooks (BKB Fine Art & Publishers: United Kingdom, 2008). “Military Macaws,” the second and final painting of Brooks’ offered in the sale, showed two extremely detailed macaws in a jungle scene and made $6,000.
“Tropical Dawn” by Kim Brooks (British, b 1936), 2000, 48 by 68 inches framed, signed and dated lower right, was accompanied by a book written by the artist’s husband; the lot went out at $9,000 ($15/30,000).
Several pieces with ormolu gilding made their way into the top selling lots of the sale, led by a Napoleon III ormolu-mounted porphyry urn mounted atop an incarnat Turquin marble pedestal. Completed circa 1870, the urn had a gadrooned bowl-shaped body and scroll handles. It had provenance to a Christie’s, London, sale which took place on March 22, 2001, where it sold for $33,351. In this sale, the urn reached $15,600. Other ormolu items included a patinated bronze figural torchère with five lights, which made $14,400 and a French Vernis-Martin amboyna and amaranth side cabinet made by Henry Dasson, which closed its doors at $9,000.
The third-highest price of the sale went to a circa Nineteenth Century fluted full suit of armor in the Sixteenth Century German Maximillian style. Made from steel, the suit of armor contained fluted, roped and scalloped details and included full arm defences with articulated gauntlets as well as full leg defences with smoothed greaves and articulated and squared sabatons. The suit of armor was previously sold at a Sotheby’s London sale on December 7, 2001, sale, where it made $14,314. It surpassed that in this sale, earning $15,600.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, 561-278-8996 or www.hoodauction.com.
