Both Franz Sedlacek’s “Blumenstück,” top, and John Singer Sargent’s “Bologna Fountain,” finished at $183,000 in Skinner’s May 10 sale.

BOSTON — In a result of equality, two paintings — one by John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) and the other by Franz Sedlacek (Austrian, 1891–1945) — topped Skinner’s May 10 American and European Works of Art auction at $183,000 each. Both works went over double their high estimates.

Sargent’s “Bologna Fountain,” a 12¼-by-18-inch watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper, was described as “one of the most subtle and beautiful of Sargent’s architectural studies” in the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Sedlacek’s “Blumenstück,” a 24-7/8-by-20-inch oil on plywood panel still life flower painting, was an example of the painter’s exploration into magic realism. The catalog noted, “In this fantastical still life, Sedlacek borrowed subject and painting style from Dutch and Flemish Old Master panel paintings, and transformed those into a strange and beguiling composition of precisely rendered tendrils and arabesques, fantastical flowers and insects.”

Both paintings had documented provenance back to the artist. Sargent’s work was purchased from the artist by the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, New York, through M. Knoedler & Co., in 1909. It was then deaccessioned through M. Knoedler & Co. in 1926 and was sold into the collection of John S. Ames, Boston, in 1927. In 1959, it passed to the estate of Elizabeth M. Ames.

Sedlacek’s painting had descended in the artist’s family since its creation in 1939. It was gifted from the artist to his brother, Julius Sedlacek, who then gifted it to his daughter, Elizabeth, on her wedding day in 1947. It had remained in that family since.

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