Company president Josh Eldred shows off “The Peaceable Kingdom.” From a group of related oil paintings by Quaker folk artist Edward Hicks, this circa 1825 version with rhymed borders topped Eldred’s $7.16 million Americana Week sales, going to Connecticut dealer David Schorsch on behalf of a client for $1,512,000.
Review & Onsite Photos by Laura Beach
EAST DENNIS, MASS. — Marguerite Riordan, the late dealer and tastemaker who collaborated with Nancy and Larry Dickson to assemble a superb Americana collection, measured her own professional rise by two examples of “The Peaceable Kingdom.” At Connecticut dealer John Walton’s insistence, she bought her first example by the Quaker folk artist for $350,000, presenting it at the Winter Antiques Show in 1983. The Dicksons joined the show’s opening night queue to buy Riordan’s second “Peaceable Kingdom” for nearly $1 million in 1991.
The gracious, well-liked couple lived quietly with the painting, an icon of American folk art, hanging it in the dining room of their antiques-filled home in Tampa, Fla. Regulars on the Northeastern collecting circuit, they accented their waterfront residence in Stonington, Conn., with more objects reflecting coastal New England and its maritime heritage.
Studded with American furniture, folk art, portrait miniatures, needlework and marine and China Trade specialties, the diverse, impeccably curated Dickson collection garnered $4.82 million at Eldred’s, on roughly 300 lots. The two-part event on July 21-22 ignited fierce competition between top dealers and prominent collectors, some bidding under the auctioneer’s canopied terrace on Cape Cod and more participating by phone or online.
Top honors went to the circa 1825 “Peaceable Kingdom,” which sold to Connecticut dealer David Schorsch on behalf of a client for $1,512,000. The underbidder was on the phone, and a private collector in the tent was in close pursuit to about $900,000. The oil on canvas, which descended in the Hicks family until New Hampshire collector Eddy Nicholson acquired it in 1986, depicted William Penn’s treaty with the Lenape and a child with pacified animals enclosed in a rhymed border.
Many lots spoke to Larry Dickson’s love of birds. This Audubon print of a “Great Blue Heron” from Birds of America, plate CCXI (211), engraved by Havell, London, 1834, achieved $163,800 ($40/70,000).
Hicks, who died in Newtown, Penn., in 1849, is survived by roughly 130 works on canvas, panel and paper, but “Peaceable Kingdom” paintings with rhymed borders of this size are scarce. “The majority of them are institutionally owned. The last one I remember seeing was in the private market, perhaps 20 years ago,” said Schorsch, recalling a time when the trade calculated the value of a “Peaceable Kingdom” partly by the number of animals depicted.
“My parents were deeply spiritual people. They viewed the painting, with its scripture from Isaiah, as a kind of prayer for peace in the world. Dad found the continuity of its long lineage especially moving,” the couple’s daughter, Carol Dickson Jahnke, said by phone.
After the Dicksons passed — Larry in 2020, Nancy in 2025 — Jahnke and her brother, Mark, contemplated how best to disperse the collection, as their had parents wished. “Last year, while attending the scrimshaw symposium [in New Bedford, Mass.], my husband and I got an impromptu appointment at Eldred’s with company CEO and president, Josh Eldred, and Bill Bourne, head of Americana and marine arts. We didn’t want the collection cherry-picked, and we needed a house with a good retail following and expertise in marine and China Trade artifacts. We made our decision quickly and are very pleased with our choice,” Jahnke said. Eldred’s handsome catalog for the single-owner session was a fitting tribute to Nancy Dickson, whose detailed recordkeeping informed the publication.
This Nineteenth Century scrimshaw whale ivory hand-holding-shaft pie crimper, 6 inches long, took $12,600 ($1,5/2,500).
Nancy Druckman, who presided over one landmark sale of American folk art after the next during her long tenure at Sotheby’s, characterized the Dickson offering as one of the last great Riordan-shaped collections to come to market, likening it those formed by Susan and Mark Laracy, auctioned by Sotheby’s in 2007 for $7,075,680, and by Arun and Barbara Singh, sold by Sotheby’s in 2020 for $3,002,375.
The Dickson trove also illustrated the lasting influence of midcentury collectors Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little on folk-art afficionados who followed. As Jahnke noted, “My mother loved anything owned by Nina, with whom she shared an appreciation for the inherent beauty of very simple, utilitarian objects — all the little details showing someone cared enough to make a utilitarian piece a work of art.”
Jahnke concluded, “Organizing this sale has been a labor of love. My brother and I are grateful to Eldred’s for the resources, care and professionalism they devoted to it. We are glad to know the objects are going to people who will appreciate and safeguard them for the next generation.”
Featuring a “tightly built” collection, as Druckman described it, the Dickson sale stimulated intense interest among enthusiasts while showcasing Eldred’s growing stake in the shifting market for Americana at auction.
Eliza Waterman’s well-known “State House” sampler, stitched at the Balch School in Providence, R.I., in 1788, claimed $214,200 ($80/$120,000). The piece was closely identified with scholar Betty Ring’s 1983-84 traveling exhibition of Rhode Island needlework, partially underwritten by Marguerite Riordan, and was illustrated in Ring’s landmark catalog Let Virtue Be a Guide to Thee: Needlework in the Education of Rhode Island Women, 1730-1830.
“We’re committed to this space,” Josh Eldred emphasized at the close of the firm’s second annual Americana Week sales, which garnered $7.16 million in four sessions through July 24. “We were honored to have been selected to bring to auction one of the most important private collections of American antiques to be offered in recent years. Over their lifetime together, Mr and Mrs Dickson chose objects with great taste, care and discrimination, helped and guided by leading dealers and other professionals in the field.”
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. Eldred’s next auction will be its Marine Sale August 6-7. For more information, www.eldreds.com or 508-385-3116.
