A pair of oil on canvas paintings by the prolific Korean artist Kim Heung Sou (b 1919) sold for a combined $52,500 in an Internet and catalog auction April 14′8 by Litchfield County Auctions. One work was the top lot of the sale, “Head of a Young Girl Amid Triangular Shapes,” which attained $43,200.
The other was titled “Abstract Head.” Both signed paintings were executed with heavy impasto and, as their titles imply, each was a depiction of a head. They were but two of the 744 lots that changed hands of the 944 offered. The successful lots carried a presale estimate of about $350/550,000 and ended up bringing around $600,000.
A $50,000 tag sale lifted the sale’s total gross to $650,000. There were about 350 winning bidders from 33 states, plus Austria, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. The auction had a sell-through rate of 80 percent.
The merchandise came from a variety of prominent estates and collections in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Categories included modern paintings and prints, Modern design furniture and decorations, antiquities and Asian art and antiques. The sale was preceded by a five-day gallery exhibition and accompanying tag sale, a preview party and two-week online preview.
The sale’s second top achiever was a pair of Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century carved stone outdoor planters that rose to $16,800. The smaller planter depicted a sarcophagus on the front with raised serpents and featured Latin text, claw feet and a mysterious date of 1559. The other was rectangular with a Medusa-form head in the center flanked by centaur figures on the front.
Fine art dominated the list of top earners. A group of four oils on canvas board or Masonite portraits of children by Raymond Kanelba topped out at $14,647. Most were signed by the artist. Another work by Kanelba, “Portrait of Lisa Hoffman,” an oil on canvas, made $7,800. Also, “Spring Blossoms” by Eric Sloane realized $7,800.
An oil on board work by John Geoffrey Caruthers Little, “Hotel De Ville St. Montreal,” signed and dated 1959, went for $7,200, while a watercolor, pastel and gouache and collage painting by John Piper, “Foliate Head,” garnered $5,653, and an ink, watercolor and pastel on paper by Reginald Marsh breezed to $5,460.
An Egyptian mummy shroud from Dynasty 26 (circa 600 BC), made of cartonnage and linen, with the winged sky goddess Nut and the Four Sons of Horus, with inscriptions from the Book of the Dead, framed, fetched $6,420. A group of 60 Roman intaglio gemstones from the Second Century, mainly carnelian, plus four from later periods, commanded $6,120.
An amorphous figural sliding coffee table in the form of two lovers by Phillip and Kevin LaVerne, mid-Twentieth Century, wood with bronze metal facing and signed on the top, 1962, demanded $6,300, and a Modernist rosewood marble top credenza from the mid-Twentieth Century by Florence Knoll, with a white marble top that lifts off and four stacks of drawers, rose to $4,980.
A Spratling Mexican sterling silver water pitcher, probably made in the Twentieth Century and of a bulbous form, with applied 10-lobed floral decoration and ribbon handle with ruffled accents, realized $4,357.
A lot of two large cameo glass vases, French, circa early Twentieth Century, one with grapevine decoration in purple and amber and the other with leafy vine in purple over yellow ground, both signed “Galle” near the bottom, sold for $4,920; and a Tiffany Studios patinated bronze table lamp base, circa early Twentieth Century, stamped, made $4,794.
Returning to artwork, a set of 12 signed posters and lithographs by noted artist Romare Bearden, each showing four figures in profile, went to a determined bidder for $5,160. The set comprised two color lithographs, numbered 11/150 and 63/150, two metallic posters for the International Play Group and eight unsigned color lithographs.
Rounding out the auction’s top lots, a Midcentury Modern walnut double dresser by Edward Wormley for Dunbar, featuring four large drawers plus four smaller ones and brass and rosewood pulls, brought $4,320, and two Art Deco-style carved wood figural wall ornaments of two women wearing pleated robes, circa Twentieth Century, made from light-toned wood, hit $3,854.
All prices reported include the 20 percent buyer’s premium.
For more information, www.LitchfieldCountyAuctions.com or 860-567-4661.
