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Maine Antique Digest, March 2015 3-B
- AUCTION -
Northeast Auctions, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Chinese Wall Plaque Sells for $57,600
by Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo
T
he main gallery was standing
room only for Northeast Auctions’
November 16, 2014, sale. Dealers
and an increased number of retail buy-
ers were front and center for over 600
lots, beginning with bicycles and a pedal
car and ending with coveted Chinese art
objects. It’s not easy to hold an auction
these days. What’s up is down, and
what’s down is up.
The highlight of the Chinese porcelain
was a famille verte wall plaque, 14¾" x
9 7/8", from the Republic period, painted
with a scene of willow trees against a
rocky landscape with a mountain in the
distance and two men in a boat. It also
bore a calligraphic poem and a single
seal. Bidders liked it a lot and pushed it
past its $800/1200 estimate to $57,600,
selling to a buyer in the room. The
plaque and other famille rose porcelain
had been acquired from the Canton col-
lection of Alma Cleveland Porter, the
bulk of which is at the Peabody Essex
Museum.
Another Chinese porcelain famille
verte wall plaque, 12" x 9 1/8", from the
19th century, was decorated with a scene
of birds along a roiling river amid trees.
It sold for $2280 (est. $400/600).Two
late 19th-century Chinese Canton export
famille rose porcelain hexagonal garden
seats of note sold. They were
each 18½"
high. One, with a rose medallion deco-
ration, brought $4080, while the other,
with an overall decoration of birds, but-
terflies, insects, peonies, and fruit, went
for $3480. Then there was a 7½" high
pair of Chinese porcelain vases with
cartouches of birds perching on flower-
ing branches against a sgraffito yellow
ground and bearing four character seal
marks on the bottom. From a different
source and estimated at $300/500, the
pair sold for $3840. A Chinese center
table with an inset rouge marble top was
carved deeply and sold for $8640. It was
deaccessioned by the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
An Ammi Phillips oil on canvas por-
trait, 32" x 27", of Elizabeth Harden-
bergh DeWitt (1792-1849) of Marble-
town, New York, had descended in the
DeWitt family and sold to a collector on
the phone for $33,600. The sitter was
the wife of William Cantine DeWitt
(1796-1871), who practiced medicine in
nearby Saugerties. The 1830-35 paint-
ing was included in
Ammi Phillips:
Portrait Painter, 1788-1865
at the
Museum of American Folk Art in 1968.
A New Hampshire Queen Anne birch
tall chest of drawers, 58" x 39¼" x 36¼",
in a red wash, by Peter Bartlett of Salis-
bury, New Hampshire, sold for $8400.
The chest, with six graduated drawers,
a carved base, and bandy cabriole legs,
was accompanied by a copy of Walter A.
Backofen’s
Some Queen Anne Furniture
from New Hampshire’s Federal Period
,
in which it is featured. As he hammered
it down, after it was nearly passed, Ron
Bourgeault observed that the chest had
sold previously for $45,000.
Bidding opened at $2750 on a Penn-
sylvania Chippendale walnut dressing
table, possibly a Philadelphia exam-
ple, its top with canted corners, one
long drawer carved as three, above two
smaller ones, with cabriole legs with
shell-carved knees and webbed pan
feet, and ended when it went to a phone
bidder for $12,000. The table, 29½" x
33 3/8" x 20½", is included as no. 47 in
American Furniture in the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston
by Richard Randall Jr.
It was deaccessioned by the museum. A
New England Federal-style mahogany
window seat, which also appeared in
Randall and also was deaccessioned by
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, sold
for $1560.
The Chinese painted porcelain wall plaque, from
the collection of Alma Cleveland Porter, brought
$57,600.
An American school pair of portraits (each 30" x 25") of a brother and sister, circa 1830, sold on
line for $5400.
It’s not easy to hold
an auction these
days. What’s up is
down, and what’s
down is up.
A Pennsylvania Chippendale wal-
nut lowboy (case 29¾" high x 31½"
wide with a 35" x 21¼" top) with a
shell-carved apron, cabriole legs with
shell-carved knees, and ball-and-claw
feet brought $4560 (est. $1800/2800).
The lowboy was sold previously at
Northeast in the August 8, 2010, auc-
tion of the Foster-Lemmens collection
at which time it brought $3540 (est.
$6000/10,000). Go figure. A 74½"
x
43¼" x 24" Pennsylvania Chippendale
walnut chest of drawers, three over
two over five graduated drawers, on a
molded base with scrolled returns
and bracket feet, sold for $3600. It,
too, was part of the Foster-Lem-
mens collection and had sold in
2010 for $3835 (est. $2500/4500).
Six matched Massachusetts
North Shore Queen Anne maple
side chairs, with oxbow crest rails,
vasiform splats, cabriole legs, pad
feet, and block and vase-turned
stretchers, realized $8700 on the
phone. The set included Israel
Sack in its provenance. A Massa-
chusetts Sheraton mahogany ser-
pentine card table, 29½" x 35¼"
x 18¼", with spiral and line inlay
to the top and geometric panels in
the apron, sold above estimate at
$1680.
ANew York Queen Anne cherry
drop-leaf dining table also had
Sack provenance and was illus-
trated in
American Antiques from
Israel Sack Collection
, vol. V. It
sold for $5100 on the phone. An
83½" high New England Queen
Anne-style maple bonnet-top highboy
with fan carving sold for $4560 (est.
$2000/3000).
A Regency mahogany drum table,
29¾" high x 48" diameter, with a
leather top and acanthus carving, sold
for $6000 (est. $1200/1800). A set of
four 8¼" high early 18th-century Ger-
man brass candlesticks made in Augs-
burg carried the same estimate as the
drum table and sold for $4320. An
English Chippendale mahogany archi-
tect’s table went for $1800. Rounding
out the eclectic selection of furniture
was a Swedish brown-painted bench,
with a spindle back, a plank seat, and
splayed and chamfered legs, that went
for $1140.
An interesting bit of Boston history
was depicted in the oil on artist’s board
View of State Street with the Old State
House from Long Wharf, Boston
, 9" x
12", which depicted the beginning of
the parade celebrating the three-day
Great Boston Railroad Jubilee in Sep-
tember 1851. The event celebrated the
completion of a 20-year project to link
Boston and Montreal and the western
U.S. states by rail. The painting bore
the 1855-85 label of Boston dealers
Williams & Everett at their Washington
Street address. It sold for $4800. It went
to collectors who will research the pic-
ture and have already studied the event.
New Hampshire history was repre-
sented by a 14¼" long boxwood fife
marked for the First Company, 22nd
Regiment, New Ipswich. Dated 1796,
it sold to an unidentified institution for
$1320 (est. $400/600). Auctioneer Ron
Bourgeault told
M.A.D.
, “It went where
it should go.”
A miniature mahogany book, 1¾" x
1½", carved by John Haley Bellamy,
commemorated the Spanish cruiser
Reina Mercedes
, which was captured at
Santiago, Cuba in the Spanish-Ameri-
can War in 1898. Carved from wood
from the ship while it was being refit-
ted at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,
it attracted much interest but slimmer
rewards and sold for $300. Bourgeault
said also about the book that it had
“gone where it should have.” The ship
itself became a receiving ship at New-
port and later a detention vessel and
barracks ship at the U.S. Naval Acad-
emy until 1957.
A couple of bicycles attracted no
small interest. An iron velocipede,
a.k.a. boneshaker, with a wrought-iron
frame, iron wheels with wooden spokes,
wooden handlebar grips, a leather seat,
and an iron stand, was stamped “J.B. &
Co., Makers, Boston.” The front wheel
was 37" high, and the overall length
was 70". It sold on the phone for $7200
(est. $1000/1500). A 1959 Schwinn
Red Phantom bicycle was a gem, with
a leather saddle, a patented spring fork,
a push-button horn, a streamlined tank,
fender lights, an automatic brake light,
a kickstand, and a luggage rack. It sold
for $960 to a man who summers on
Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hamp-
shire. He plans to spiff it up with new
tires and other restoration for his grand-
children to ride around the lake. Lot 1,
a dandy duck-egg-blue Austin Junior
Forty roadster pedal car from about
1950, failed to sell.
The highlight of a selection of Delft
was a pair of chargers, 1690-1700,
painted in blue, yellow, and green,
one, 13¾" diameter, depicting Queen
Mary II with the initials “MR,” and
the other, 13 3/8" diameter, with Wil-
liam, Prince of Orange, with the ini-
tials “WR.” Each portrait was flanked
by tulips, which were also featured
on the rim. The pair sold for $9600.
This Ammi Phillips (1788-1865) oil on canvas
portrait (32" x 27") of Elizabeth Hardenbergh
DeWitt went to a collector for $33,600. Northeast
Auctions photo.
The pair of Dutch
Delft chargers, 1690-
1700, depicted Queen
Mary II and William,
Prince of Orange.
The brilliantly col-
ored pair sold on
the phone for $9600.
Northeast Auctions
photo.
☞