Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers celebrated March 31⁁pril 2 with a $3.1 million sale featuring American and Irish paintings, jewelry and a pair of Eighteenth Century English console tables at its spring gallery auction.
Tension mounted and numerous sighs from the audience were heard Saturday afternoon while anxious telephone bidders escalated the sale of a pair of English George III satinwood console tables in the manner of Mayhew & Ince. The pair attained $602,000 to an overseas telephone bidder.
These tables, with elaborate marquetry decoration and crossbanded demilune tops, display an all-round bell flower border incorporating rosette and ribbon medallions; the square legs, also with running bell flower vines and rosette medallion capitals, end on square spade feet. The late Eighteenth Century craftsmanship in such condition is rare. The pair was originally estimated at $30/40,000.
Records were broken for two regional artists, Kathryne E. Bard Cherry and Fred Green Carpenter. The Carpenter painting, “At The Quatre Arts Ball,” was exhibited at the Society of Western Artists 16th annual exhibition, 1911‱2, and sold for double its high estimate at $35,400. The top records achieved for paintings by Kathryn Cherry at $28,320 and $56,640 depict colorful still lifes measuring 40 by 36 inches and were purchased by a floor bidder.
Ivey-Selkirk offered the Smurfit-Stone Corporate collection of 29 Irish works of art that were sold for the benefit of St Louis and Chicago charities. This unusual collection aroused interest from the US buyers to Belfast and Dublin, Ireland. Highlights include an oil painting by Irish cubist artist Mary Swanzy that sold for $37,760.
A “Study Towards an Image of W.B. Yeats,” 1982, watercolor on paper by Louis le Brocquy, doubled its estimate and fetched $106,200. Provenance for this study includes the Taylor and Grafton Galleries of Dublin, Ireland. Additional Irish works by Terrence Flanagan, Barrie Cooke, Carey Clarke, Patrick Scott and Micheal J. de Burca sold at or above estimate.
American paintings offered include artist Thomas Hill’s (1829‱908) view of Yosemite Valley, dated 1901, that sold to a West Coast bidder for $35,400; a bustling canal scene of Malines, Belgium, dated 1906, by Colin Campbell Cooper and exhibited at the Boston Art Club, which took $63,720, also to a West Coast phone bidder.
A large canvas of hunting dogs in the field by Edmund Henry Osthaus, from an estate in Mount Vernon, Ill., realized $43,660. A portrait of an American Indian seated in a cave by a fire, by Carl Wimar, dated 1850, from the estate of George R. Brooks, former executive director of the Missouri History Museum, brought $88,500.
Continental paintings included a snowy city scene with stream and waterfall by Frits Thaulow, (Norwegian, 1847‱906) that achieved $140,000 from an overseas telephone bidder, and a busy market scene, dated 1882, by Paul Wilhelm Keller-Reutlingen (German, 1854‱920) at $29,500.
A large selection of Vienna porcelains included a pair of Vienna urns in the neoclassical style in the manner of Angelica Kaufmann, mounted as table lamps from the Edward Daumit collection of St Louis, for $8,500.
A rare antique Chinese rhinoceros horn libation cup of traditional oblong pitcher form sold for $41,300, tripling its estimate. Extensive condition report requests before the auction heightened the interest in this rare cup.
The firm’s newly appointed jewelry department head Barbara Chambers cataloged more than 340 lots of fine jewelry. A wide assortment of platinum, gold, diamond, gemstone and pearl rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and brooches were sold.
An emerald cut diamond solitaire ring weighing 10.5 carats in a platinum setting fetched $173,000 amid vigorous bidding from the phone and the floor. A natural fancy deep brown-orange and white diamond ring in 18K yellow gold and platinum accompanied with a GIA report sold for $32,450, and a colored diamond bracelet weighing approximately 42 carats including brown, yellow, pink, blue and white diamonds brought $77,520.
All prices reported include the buyer’s premium. Ivey-Selkirk at 7447 Forsyth Boulevard is accepting consignments for Modernism and summer gallery auctions. For more information, www.iveyselkirk.com , 314-726-5515 or 800-728-8002.
