WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. – Receipts surpassed $2 million at Charlton Hall’s March 2-4 auction headlined by property from the estates of Arturo Peralta Ramos II and his wife, Jacqueline. Day one featured 420 lots of material acquired by Arturo Peralta Ramos with others inherited from his mother, the well-known collector Millicent Rogers. “Citizens of 125 countries registered for the auction. We had to push bidding to the internet after we ran out of phone lines,” said Kinga Bender, Charlton Hall’s director of fine and decorative arts. Top honors went to “January Bills” by David Gilmour Blythe (1815-1865), a leading genre painter who worked in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1930s, the painting, which appears to have tripled the previous auction record for Blythe, went to a phone bidder for $420,000 ($15/25,000) including buyer’s premium. “Squirrel Hill Farm” by Pennsylvania folk artist John Kane (1860-1934) left the room at $120,000 ($6/9,000). Watch for a complete report in Antiques and The Arts Weekly.