Antiques with Maine provenance of one kind or another were the major draw at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ May 22′3 auction. The sale star was the ship portrait, “The Lofty Trader Scottish Moors ” by English artist Montague Dawson that sold for $71,875. The oil on canvas portrait of the white-hulled clipper under full sail is one of two the artist painted of the ship and it went to a Maine buyer on the phone.
Andrew Wyeth’s 1935 view of the Ridge Church in Martinsville, Maine, near Tenant’s Harbor, stirred a lot of presale interest, but when it was offered, it was met with an odd ominous silence, given that this part of Maine is Wyeth country. It sold after the auction for $220,000 to a pleased collector who lives about five miles from the church, which still stands. The painting was a gift from the artist to an area couple in whose barn he painted frequently.
The naïve fantasy oil on linen landscape by Erastus Salisbury Field, a version of his “Garden of Eden” paintings, brought $26,450. The picture was an oil on canvas work laid on panel as a fireboard and later framed. Auctioneer Kaja Veilleux announced from the podium that it was headed to the Springfield Museums. The picture came from a Brunswick, Maine, home. Two other Field “Garden of Eden” paintings are in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Shelburne Museum.
“Mother and Child,” a 1946 oil on canvas by Louise Nevelson, sold for $20,700. Nevelson had roots in the area †at age 6 she arrived with her family in nearby Rockland, Maine, where they had emigrated from Russia in 1905. An unsigned portrait of a girl in a bright yellow dress, from about 1920, fetched $11,150. “Everglades Cabin” by Florida artist Early Cunningham, who was born in nearby Edgecomb, Maine, sold for $6,900. The painting was a vivid folky depiction of the Everglades and the life therein.
The phones came alive for a group of Chinese porcelains from the estate of arts patron Anne Bigelow Stern, who was a mainstay of the Caramoor Center for Music Arts in Katonah, N.Y., also her childhood summer home. She had purchased the porcelains from Chait Galleries.
The highlight was a 4-inch Ch’ien Lung famille rose vase with the four-character mark that sold on the phone for $63,750. The Beijing enamel vase was decorated with phoenix and flowering scrolls on a yellow ground and with flowers on a pink ground on the neck. It, and all the Chinese porcelain sold, went to either Hong Kong or mainland China buyers.
A Canton Yung Cheng period enamel dish with brilliant decoration of flowers and birds retained the Chait labels and realized $21,850. while a Ch’ien Lung enamel dish with figural and floral decorations elicited $9,200.
Decorated in detail with phoenix, Mandarin ducks, cranes and other birds enclosed in a border of ju-i heads with flowers and arabesques, a pair of Ch’ien Lung Canton saucer-shaped plates brought $5,175. The Stern lots all went to different phone bidders.
An early Chinese porcelain carp-form bowl with a green interior was signed and sold for $6,375, and a Chinese Export porcelain urn decorated with a pheasant and flowers and mounted as a lamp brought $5,750. An exceptional Chinese Export cobalt blue and white porcelain punch bowl with a serpent and leaf decoration went to a phone bidder for $4,600.
From the late Nineteenth Century, a pair of carved ivory foo dogs with ink highlights in their manes was unsigned but fetched $4,313 online, while a Nineteenth Century carved rosewood folding screen with 20 hand painted blue and white Nanking willowware tiles depicting military engagements, landscapes and river scenes realized $10,350.
Bidders were spellbound when a bidding competition erupted over a handsome early Twentieth Century settee made in Maine or New Hampshire with birch root burls that were normally reserved for use as Penobscot Indian clubs. It was embellished further with carved fans and branches. Bidding opened at $1,000 and ended when the editor of Architectural Digest prevailed at $26,450. She also beat out the phones when she took a companion pair of armchairs, also in white paint, for $25,300. All three pieces came from the same porch of an area house.
A pair of pillows with leather fringe and decorated with Native American portraits after images by Karl Bodmar or George Catlin might have gone nicely with the root furniture. They went elsewhere, however, for $2,595.
Another furniture highlight was a two-part Louis XV tulipwood and kingwood table d’accouchee with marquetry inlay, and made with a reading and writing stand, a vanity mirror, wells and drawers, that sold for $17,250. The table, dating from about 1755, also bore a Chinese lacquer panel with a pavilion in a landscape. As he hammered it down, Veilleux reported that it was headed back to Paris. It came from a Deer Isle collection of a French-born woman.
A diminutive American Hepplewhite mahogany bowfront sideboard with a figured maple top and curly maple inlay to the legs realized $5,750 from a phone bidder. It came from a Boston house that proved to be filled with exceptional pieces. An Eighteenth Century pair of cherry side chairs with shaped crest rails, banister backs and turned legs on hearty Spanish feet brought $4,025. A Sheraton worktable in bold curly maple elicited $3,623, and a Boston Sheraton mahogany chest with lunette inlay had a Thomas Seymour attribution, but sold for $3,450.
From a Kennebunkport house, a 91-inch Connecticut mahogany tall clock by East Windsor maker Daniel Burnap had an engraved silver face and a painted moon dial and sold on the phone for $7,475.
Attracting intense interest was a Seventeenth Century Japanese imperial award-grade Tanegashima (musket) from about 1635 that had a black lacquer wooden stock decorated with ivy, imperial chrysanthemum fittings, an octagonal barrel and a flared lotus-form muzzle. It had come to Thomaston Auction on a free appraisal day and sold for $10,063. Veilleux said it was “the best armament we have ever had.”
Material descended from Confederate President Jefferson Davis included an enameled gold lapel pin presented to Davis by the Confederate Survivors Association of Augusta in 1884, along with a portrait of Davis. The lot fetched $4,025. Two wedding spoons made in Washington by Robert Keyworth that were presented to Davis on the occasion of his 1835 wedding brought $1,553.
A six-piece lot of brass and copper comprising a brass holosteric barometer made for the US Lighthouse Service, a double lidded box, also with lighthouse service marks, a brass dustpan, a copper teakettle with a brass finial, a water canteen and a pair of leather and nickel plated binoculars realized $5,175. They came from the estate of Admiral Willard J. Smith, a commandant of the US Coast Guard.
A 27-inch Tiffany & Co. sterling tray brought $4,715, and a five-piece silver tea service from Tiffany & Co. went for $2,300. Among several sets of sterling flatware was a 133-piece example by Gorham in the 1882 Kings II pattern that fetched $4,485.
Two Louis Vuitton trunks attested to the enduring popularity of the label. A vintage LV wardrobe brought $8,625 and a steamer trunk fetched $5,463.
Often at auction it is the smalls that do not generate high prices, but are interesting in themselves. A case in point was a Nineteenth Century carved ivory figure of St George on horseback, slaying the dragon, which was mounted on an onyx base. Estimated at $800․1,000, and with a replaced sword, it realized $3,220.
A monumental Sevres urn with gilt bronze mounts was decorated with a maiden surrounded by three putti on one side and with a landscape with deer on the other. It was signed “E Soitevill” and it drew $6,900. An art pottery group comprising a Van Briggle pot with an aqua glaze and leafy decoration, a 5½-inch Rookwood vase with a floral pattern, an 8¼-inch vase marked ABT and a 7½-inch vase in aqua attracted much interest and sold for $7,475. A Weller Pottery vase decorated with a winter scene by Hester Pillsbury realized $4,025.
Decorated with a view of the Bidston Lighthouse off Liverpool and 58 shipping company flags and with a wreath encircling Bidston Lighthouse signals, a Liverpool creamware jug went to a phone bidder for $2,875. A Liverpool creamware gravy boat decorated with an image of the American whaler Hope and forget-me-nots sold in the room for $2,185.
The sale was a three-day event, beginning with nearly 800 lots of books and ephemera, gathered to delight collectors and dealers. The highlight of the group was a group of six albumen cabinet photographs of Washington Roebling on the Brooklyn Bridge while still in the construction process. Roebling’s father designed the bridge, and he was the chief engineer. The photos came to light during the cleanout of a house in Brooklyn and sold for a handsome $12,650.
Autographs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the earliest of which was dated 1793, were attached to album pages and fetched $5,175, and an 1862 presidential appointment signed by President Abraham Lincoln and his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, for John B. Lewis as brigade secretary of volunteers was $4,140.
Graphic World War II pen and ink illustrations by Kerr Eby of the horrors of the South Pacific Theater realized $4,600, while the star of the rare books was the 25-volume limited edition of The Writings of Mark Twain that was autographed and published in 1899 and which sold for $4,600.
All prices reported include the 15 percent buyer’s premium.
For additional information, www.thomastonauction.com or 207-354-8141.
