“Lone Rock and Sea,” Rockwell Kent, 1950. Oil on canvas.

Portrait by Itinerate American Artist Comes Home to $27,500 at Ohio Sale

AUSTINBURG, OHIO – A work by an itinerate American artist of the early Nineteenth Century – a woman who traveled from town to town in New England earning a meager living as a portraitist – achieved $27,500 at Rachel Davis Fine Arts’ September 23 painting auction, held in conjunction with DeFina Auctions Fall sale.

Assigned a pre-sale estimate of $2/4,000, the pastel on paper portrait of “George Morrillo Bartol,” 1827, by Susannah Paine, signed and titled on the verso, was the object of contention among five phone bidders, heating into a battle between two collectors. The work was won by a New England buyer.

Women artists were well represented at the auction. A European work both in style and subject, “Fete Galante by a Renaissance Villa,” an oil on panel by the early Twentieth Century Italian Emma Ciardi, signed and dated 1915, charmed numerous proxy bidders, ultimately succumbing to the bidding of an East cCoast buyer at a final price of $13,200.

An early Twentieth Century American landscape, very regionalist in flavor, “St Stephen’s in Sunlight, Ashland, Maine,” an oil on masonite by Anne C. Bradley, further testified to the power of the female paint brush, going for a strong $3,300.

Another New England scene, this one depicting “Afternoon Rockport” by Anthony Thieme, moved beyond high estimate to $9,900. An autumn landscape by Cullen Yates similarly fell over estimate at $3,575. An illustrative gouache on paper of an Indian encampment by Victor Casnelli powered past its high estimate to $2,860.

An impressionistic mountainscape by Julian Rix soared between high and low estimate to $3,300. A house in winter by Bertram Bruestle warmed within estimate at $2,530, while another winter scene by the artist nestled into low estimate at $1,320.

European paintings included an oil on canvas of a peasant herding horses by the late Nineteenth Century Italian Andrea Marchisio, which similarly skirted estimate at $1,650. The Englishman William Allcott’s oil of a steamship in storm reached safe harbor just shy of estimate at $1,430.

Cleveland artists garnered the attention of both local and national dealers and collectors. Works by the late Paul Ulen, a Michigan native who lived and worked in Lakewood, Ohio, included a watercolor of a train passing a hay wagon, exhibited at the American Watercolor Society in 1950, which traveled to $1,210, and a self-portrait which sold for $2,090, above estimate.

A Parisian market scene, an oil on canvas from 1890 by Clevelander Charles de Klyn, sold for $990. “Provincetown,” an oil by Ora Coltman, also sold for $990, while the artist’s “Williamsburg” went for $605.