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22-B Maine Antique Digest, April 2015
- AUCTION -
included in the auction totals:
Amaryllis Equestris (Barba-
dos Lady)
sold for $268,400
and
Amaryllis Aurea (Golden
Hurricane Lily)
for $183,000. Both sold to the same buyer,
a collector Arader has been bidding against for years, albeit
unknowingly. “Natural history is just fine,” Arader stated.
The top American painting was
Seabright from Galilee,
New Jersey
, an 1880 oil on canvas (21" x 42") by Francis
Augustus Silva (1835-1886). It sold to an absentee bidder for
$183,000 (est. $150,000/200,000).
The painting depicts Sea Bright,
New Jersey, as seen from the
small town of Galilee, which lies
on the land that separates the
Shrewsbury River from the Atlan-
tic Ocean. It had been on the auc-
tion block twice before but failed
both times. Phillips de Pury and
Company offered it in 2002 with
a $175,000/225,000 estimate, and
at Sotheby’s—during the Graham Arader sale in 2009—it
couldn’t find a buyer with an estimate of $125,000/175,000.
After the sale, Arader said, “We’re delighted. We made
sales to people in Mexico, Greece, China, Japan…people we
didn’t know before. We’re not getting the people Sotheby’s
gets—people that like the glitter. We’re not getting glitter
people. We’re getting serious, sophisticated, knowledgeable
collectors who ask penetrating questions—and keep asking
the questions until they get the information that they want.
And then, they bid. These are people I’ve never heard of
because they are private, but I’ve now found out I’ve been
bidding against them for forty years…. They love the auc-
tion process, they are very sophisticated, and they are not
going to overpay. They know when to stop.”
For more information, contact Arader Galleries at (212)
628-7625 or Mid-Hudson Auction Galleries at (914)
882-7356.
A
rader Galleries and Mid-Hudson
Auction Galleries teamed up to offer
145 lots of prints, paintings, maps,
furniture, and globes on Saturday, January
24 at Arader’s Madison Avenue gallery in
New York City. The total was impressive:
$3,277,225 for only 120 lots—25 lots were
recorded as unsold, making the sale 82%
sold.
The
sale—effi-
ciently called by
auctioneer
Joanne
Grant—was
short
and not well attended
(it went head-to-head
with Christie’s sale
of Ruth Nutt’s silver,
which lasted all day).
The
second-floor
auction room held mostly Arader staffers,
armed with bids to execute on behalf of cli-
ents or with phones in hand, ready to call
prospective bidders.
W. Graham Arader III, owner of the gal-
lery, spoke in front of the crowd, reminding
everyone about his commitment to provide
a portion of the hammer price to charitable
funding. It’s a consequential number—20%
of the hammer price if a buyer chooses to
donate to one of Arader’s causes, mostly
universities that are recipients of his lar-
gess. If a buyer had another charity he or she
preferred, Arader would donate 10% of the
hammer.
What’s that mean in real numbers? If you
assume everybody paid the buyer’s pre-
mium of 22% (Internet bidders paid 25%,
but there were only a few), the hammer total
minus the buyer’s premiumwas $2,686,250.
Twenty percent would be around $500,000,
but Arader said a lot of people picked their
own charity and that his contributions are
closer to approximately $300,000.
“It’s working,” saidArader before the sale
about his educational initiative of donating
early maps and prints to colleges and uni-
versities, provided they display them and
use them in the curriculum.
The auction had several distinctive
features. As in past auctions, Arader pro-
vided previous auction prices for the selec-
tion of Audubon prints; some had as many
as three auction results. Every lot in the cata-
log had a retail price included in the descrip-
tion, often as much as five times as the low
estimate.
If that’s not enough, on the first floor
of the townhouse, sitting on a desk, was a
three-ring binder chock full of information
about the lots, including many that revealed
what Arader had paid. It wasn’t a secret; in
fact Arader mentioned it in a speech before
the sale. “We will tell people where we got
things from,” he said, also noting that the
notebook had plenty of other information,
going back more than 20 years in some
cases.
There were 11 lots of furniture and dec-
orative arts in the catalog, including a
Philadelphia walnut tea table, estimated
at $10,000/15,000, an assembled pair of
George III mahogany library armchairs,
estimated at $40,000/50,000, and an Amer-
ican mahogany card table, circa 1785, esti-
mated at $20,000/30,000—none sold. That
was not surprising because they were not in
the building and not available for preview.
“There’s been no interest,” Arader said.
As in other sales, many of the lots
belonged to Arader himself, but he did take
some consignments from private parties.
Before the sale he said it was about 50/50
and there were some reserves, albeit low
ones. The stuff was for sale, despite what
Arader and others had paid for it in the past.
The top lots were two watercolors by
Pierre-Joseph Redouté—
Amaryllis Eques-
tris (Barbados Lady)
and
Amaryllis Aurea
(Golden Hurricane Lily)—
that were each
estimated at $150,000/200,000, and both
were bought in during the sale. They both
appear on the post-sale list as sold and are
Mid-Hudson Auction Galleries in conjunction with Arader Galleries, New York City
Arader Gets $3.277 Million for Fewer than 145 Lots
by Clayton Pennington
Photos courtesy Arader Galleries
“We’re getting
serious, sophisticated,
knowledgeable
collectors who
ask penetrating
questions.”
Seabright from Galilee, New Jersey
, 1880, a 21" x 42" oil on canvas by
the short-lived American artist Francis Augustus Silva (1835-1886), sold
to an absentee bidder for $183,000 (est. $150,000/200,000). The painting
depicts Sea Bright, New Jersey, as seen from the small town of Gali-
lee, which lies on the land that separates the Shrewsbury River from
the Atlantic Ocean. Two auction houses tried to sell it before—Phillips
de Pury and Company in 2002 (est. $175,000/225,000) and Sotheby’s in
2009 for Graham Arader (est. $125,000/175,000)—but failed.
The river scene by Ohio-born artist Thomas Worthington Whittredge
(1820-1910), oil on canvas, 10 5/16" x 19¼", circa 1866, sold to an
absentee bidder for $73,200 (est. $85,000/100,000). In 1866, Whittredge
accompanied General John Pope on an inspection of Indian settlements
after the Civil War, traveling from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, up the
south branch of the Platte River through Colorado and onward to New
Mexico; this painting may have been executed as a result of that expedi-
tion, the catalog suggested.
The 26" x 36" oil on canvas by Robert Dodd (1748-1815),
The Greenland
Whale Fishery
, ex-Richard Green, London, sold to a left bid for $97,600
(est. $80,000/100,000). According to Arader’s catalog, the term “Green-
land whale fishery” came to refer to whaling in the waters between Spits-
bergen, the largest and only populated island in northern Norway, and
Greenland. This painting was twice engraved and published by John
and Josiah Boydell in 1789 and by Fran. Ambrosi and Antoine Suntach
in 1795. It was included in Sotheby’s Graham Arader sale at Sotheby’s
on June 19, 2009, estimated at $100,000/150,000, but was bought in.
Sailing Vessels off Capri
by American artist Albert Bierstadt
(1830-1902) sold to a phone bidder on the line with Arader
Galleries’ Lori Cohen for $85,400. It was bought by a “serious
Bierstadt collector,” said Arader. The oil on paper, mounted
on board, 13 3/8" x 18 5/8", was once part of a larger framed
work containing ten views. The ten works sold at Sotheby’s on
May 21, 2003, for $467,200. According to Sotheby’s catalog,
the ten works were probably painted by Bierstadt between
1890 and 1892 and were a gift to his wife, Rosalie Osborne
Ludlow Bierstadt. Also according to Sotheby’s, the ten paint-
ings may have been an architectural element designed as part
of the studio or house, or Rosalie may have been fond of sev-
eral views and Bierstadt assembled and framed them for her.
Arader said he was thrilled it ended up with the collector who
owns two others from the group of ten.
The Upcoming Storm on the Bois de Boulogne
by Spanish artist Fran-
cisco Miralles y Galup (1848-1901), 19 5/8" x 24", oil on canvas, sold to
a phone bidder for $122,000 (est. $80,000/100,000). It was exhibited at
the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, 1993-94, in
Mas-
terworks from Private Connecticut Collections
. Galup was born in Valen-
cia, Spain, but moved to Paris and studied under Arturo Canela.
The
Upcoming Storm on the Bois de Boulogne
sold at Sotheby’s on April 18,
2008, for $121,000 (est. $100,000/150,000).