This Howard Pyle illustration of pirates, oil on board, 8 1/2 by 11 inches, accompanied by a signed letter of explanation from Pyle to artist Douglas Volk, NA, went to an anonymous phone bidder for $57,000.

Two small illustrations, both measuring less than 8 1/2 by 11 inches, by the artist many consider to be the father of American illustration, Howard Pyle (1853-1911), sold for a combined $103,000 at Cyr Auction Company’s recent auction of the contents of artist Douglas Volk’s summer estate called Hewnoaks.

The first Pyle illustration, of pirates done in oil on an 8 1/2-by-11-inch board and accompanied by a signed letter of explanation from Pyle to Volk, went to an anonymous phone bidder for $57,000. Tom Veilleux, owner of Tom Veilleux Gallery in Portland, Maine, was determined not to be the underbidder on the second small Pyle (about 6 by 8 1/2 inches). After a thrilling back and forth between Veilleux and the same phone-bidder, the second Pyle went for $32,500 – again to the anonymous Howard Pyle collector. The grand total for both lots, including the buyer’s premium, was $103,000, an auction record for small Pyle illustrations.

Several paintings by Vivian Akers (1886-1966), a Maine artist who lived and worked in the Lovell area, sold to appreciative buyers. Akers was a nationally known artist, who was born and lived most of his life in Norway, Maine. His specialties were portraiture and landscape, but he was also a gifted photographer and experimented in other media, such as bas-relief, life masks cast in plaster of Paris and in decorative wood carvings. Akers’ painting of water lilies done in oil on board (approximately 16 by 20 inches) sold for an auction record $19,550. Three other paintings, carved signs, photographs, correspondence and a life mask by Akers also sold.

Vivian Akers’ (1886-1966) painting of water lilies done in oil on board, approximately 16 by 20 inches, sold for an auction record $19,550.

These record-setting paintings were very nearly bypassed entirely. Besides the main Tudor-style house on the picturesque property on Kezar Lake in Center Lovell, Maine, five cottages there also contained paintings, sculptures, textiles, photos, furniture, correspondence and historic documents from the mid-Nineteenth to early Twenty-First Centuries, all scattered throughout the Hewnoaks retreat. Behind a tall Sheraton chest pushed against the main stairway in Hewnoaks Lodge, Cyr found a locked room that had not been opened in years. The secret room under the stairs contained boxes and baskets of correspondence and documents of historic value, more Volk studies and paintings (each of which averaged $2,500 at auction) and the Howard Pyle and Vivian Akers paintings. Also inside the secret room were approximately 16 rare photographs by Western photographer Frederick Monsen that sold for an average of $1,000 to $2,000 each. Most of Monsen’s work was destroyed when his studio burned more than 100 years ago after the Great Quake in San Francisco.

Results from the July auction of the contents of Hewnoaks “greatly exceeded our wildest dreams,” said Daniel Willett, planned giving officer of the University of Maine Foundation, which was named beneficiary of the estate upon last year’s death of 100-year-old Jessie Volk, the daughter-in-law of Douglas Volk, NA. Initially, a certified appraiser estimated the art and artifacts contained at Hewnoaks would bring in $55,000. By the time Cyr Auction Company finished finding, sorting and identifying all of the paintings, furniture, textiles, photographs and documents at the lakeside artists’ retreat, the estimate had risen significantly.

Jim Cyr, auctioneer and president of Cyr Auction Company, Amos Orcutt, president and chief executive officer of the University of Maine Foundation and Willett figured the estate would fetch six times that original estimate. After six and a half hours of nonstop bidding by 350 in-person and phone bids on nearly 800 lots, both estimates proved to be inaccurate with more than $500,000 (nearly ten times the original estimate) raised.

Prices reported include buyer’s premium. For information, www.cyrauction.com or 207-657-5253.