Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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14-C Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- auction -
Like the auction houses I’m
assigned to write about, I too
look for the super high-end
piece. Whenever I open a catalog,
I am hoping to see something that
will provide me with a headline.
It’s not fair to the rest of the art
being offered, worthy though it
may be, but that’s the reality of
the situation. By coincidence, at
Skinner’s all-day two-session sale
of paintings, sculpture, prints,
and photographs on January 23
in Boston, the three works with
the highest estimates and the big-
gest potential for good newspaper
copy were oil on canvas portraits
of women. Again it’s not fair, but
a sultry, bare-limbed odalisque
sleeping (or perhaps passed out)
on a couch in an artist’s studio,
painted by American Impression-
ist Irving Ramsey Wiles, was
much preferred by bidders over
images of staid, upright female
subjects by Frank Weston Benson
and John Singleton Copley.
Wiles titled his 1888 work
Sunlight in the Studio. That’s the
true theme of the scene in which
window light filtered through a
shade does interesting things, not
only to the reclining model but
to an Oriental rug, a slant-front
desk, metal lamp, artist’s bulg-
ing portfolio of drawings, glass
decanter (half filled with a gold
liquid the model may have drunk),
and other appointments in the
bohemian interior. Estimated at
$100,000/150,000, the painting,
fresh from private hands, inspired
two phone bidders to tango, one
of whom eventually claimed the
piece for $219,000 (including
buyer’s premium).
No such luck for Benson’s Fig-
ure in White, the subject of which
may have been the artist’s sis-
ter, and for Copley’s portrait of
Rebecca Dudley Gerrish, a Nova
Scotia merchant’s wife. Esti-
mated at $350,000/550,000 and
$150,000/250,000, respectively,
they were the evening’s desig-
nated wallflowers. Neither sold.
Auction-goers, at least those
in seek of entertainment value
alone, enjoy surprises. These days
especially, when so much hap-
pens on the phone and Internet
rather than in the room, an unan-
ticipated bidding war keeps an
audience awake. This sale had a
few of those moments. On expec-
tations of $40,000/60,000, a draw-
ing by Georgia O’Keeffe soared
to $237,000, making it the top lot
of both the afternoon and evening
sessions. The unsigned graphite on
paper was titled Banyan Tree with
Palms, Bermuda and dated 1934, a
time during which O’Keeffe stayed
on the island to rest and recuper-
ate after a nervous breakdown and
seven-week hospital stay in the
previous year. This drawing was
not a quintessential O’Keeffe. She
did only 14 drawings in Bermuda,
but the respite was an important
one for her creative development.
While there, she expressed in cor-
respondence her early thoughts
about moving to New Mexico,
where arguably her most important
work was done.
Although not a signature
O’Keeffe, the drawing was what
might be considered an afford-
able example. “Not everyone can
spend $44.4 million,” said Robin
S.R. Starr, head of Skinner’s art
department. It was a reference to
a floral painting by O’Keeffe that
sold for that price at Sotheby’s in
New York City on November 20,
2014, setting a new record for an
artwork by a female artist. So for
those who can hope to have an
O’Keeffe priced at more modest
levels, this drawing was an oppor-
tunity to compete for one. Of
course, they did have competition
from another collector category,
Starr added. “People who collect
‘Bermuda’ are a very strong and
tenacious group,” she said without
divulging anything about the ulti-
mate buyer.
The sale had two catalogs, one
for prints and photographs, the
other for paintings and sculpture.
Starr made an interesting choice
for the latter’s cover. It was Trop-
ical Splendor by Mario Carreño
(Cuban, 1913-1999). The oil on
canvas was signed and dated
1950. By that time, the Hava-
na-born Carreño no longer lived in
Cuba but returned frequently until
the revolution, after which he was
considered a counterrevolutionary
for being a modern artist. He spent
some time in New York City, but
after a visit to Chile at the invita-
tion of Pablo Neruda in 1948, he
moved there permanently. For the
painting offered at this sale Car-
reño used a palette of earth tones
to demarcate geometric shapes of
color reminiscent of Mondrian.
Into those brown and green and
gold squares and rectangles he put
symbols of his lost island home-
land: palm trees, elements of Span-
ish-influenced architecture, fruit
in a bowl, and silhouettes of two
stylized women, one balancing a
bowl on her head. Estimated at an
attention-getting $30,000/50,000,
the painting made $38,130.
The painting was consigned
by a “sometime dealer, sometime
collector,” who had it hanging on
his wall for some time, said Starr.
He had gotten it from a Massachu-
setts estate. Since Skinner opened
a satellite office in Coral Gables,
Florida, the auction house has
been seeing more Latin American
items. The fact that this paint-
ing did not come from there but
came from “a local” was ironic,
observed Starr.
The cover of the prints and
photographs catalog was a 1984
Robert Motherwell print, On the
Wing, which appeared not to sell
at the auction but which is listed
in March as sold for $4797 (est.
$5000/7000). Among the offer-
ings of multiples that bidders
liked especially well were prints
by Paul Cadmus, Albrecht Dürer,
Sol LeWitt, Jean-François Millet,
James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, and
Zao Wou-Ki; ceramics decorated
by Pablo Picasso; and Alfred
Stieglitz’s famous photograph of
immigrants arriving in the United
States.
Stieglitz made The Steerage in
1907; the photogravure on vellum
that sold at this sale was printed in
Skinner, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
Two Phone Bidders Tango for Sunlight in the Studio
by Jeanne Schinto
Photos courtesy Skinner
“All of the
things that did
really well were
super-fresh to
the market.”
1915. It had once been in the collection of artist
and collector Mina Boehm Metzger. A buyer on
the phone paid $27,060 for it—better than twice
the low estimate—making it the top lot of that
section of the sale.
Only later did I realize that the Stieglitz pho-
togravure was an excellent counterpoint to the
top lot of the other part of the sale, the O’Keeffe
drawing. Stieglitz met O’Keeffe in 1917 and
became obsessed with her. He married her, his
model and muse, in 1924, the same year he
divorced his first wife. It was also the year in
which O’Keeffe painted her first giant flower.
The relationship wasn’t a bed of roses or any
other flora, however. Although Stieglitz is cred-
ited with helping O’Keeffe realize her talent and
with championing her work in the marketplace
initially, his affair with Dorothy Norman is con-
sidered the reason for the nervous breakdown
O’Keeffe suffered prior to her time in Bermuda.
As noted above, that was an important period in
O’Keeffe’s creative life, but she probably could
have done without the grief that prompted it in
the first place.
After the sale, I tried to get some information
about what would happen next to the portrait by
Frank Weston Benson. I was particularly inter-
ested in its fate because the painting of a demure
woman in white arranging flowers in a small Chi-
nese export vase was the property of the Salem
Public Library in Salem, Massachusetts. Benson,
a native son of the city, had been a library trustee
from 1912 until his death in 1951. The children of
the artist had donated the painting to the library
in 1957. The painting had been there all these
years, but the library had decided to deacces-
sion it because security issues made displaying
it impossible.
The potential sale had received local media
attention before the auction. Afterward, the
Salem News reported that the painting had been
sold. When I phoned the paper to tell them this
was in error, managing editor Helen Gifford said
that her reporter, as he listened to the live audio
feed on the Internet, believed that the painting
had been sold at $300,000. When I told Gifford
about reserves and buy-ins, she admitted her staff
was not knowledgeable about the ways of auc-
tions. Within a couple of hours, the paper had
confirmed the no-sale and corrected its story in
its online version. The correction said, “It is now
up to the owner, the Salem Public Library, to
determine whether to seek a private buyer or try
to auction it again.” My own phone call to Nancy
Tracy, director of the library, was not returned.
Starr, for her part, said, “We were obviously
disappointed that it didn’t sell, but given where
it came from, it needed to be protected [with a
reserve].” Aside from that buy-in and the Copley,
she and the auction house were very pleased with
the sale’s results overall.
For more information, contact Skinner by
phone at (617) 350-5400 or see the website
).
Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 12¾" x 10" photo-
gravure on vellum printed in 1915, $27,060 (est.
$12,000/18,000).
Marie Keep, Skinner’s managing director and one
of its senior vice presidents, auctioned a portion of
the sale. Schinto photo.
Paige Lewellyn (left) of Skinner’s Boston staff
and Robin S.R. Starr, a vice president and head of
American and European fine art for the auction
house. Schinto photo.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Banyan
Tree with Palms, Bermuda, unsigned,
titled, and dated (“…1934”), 21¾" x
14¾" (sheet size), graphite on paper,
$237,000 (est. $40,000/60,000).
Sunlight in the Studio by Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948)
sold for $219,000 (est. $100,000/150,000). The signed and dated
(“1888”) oil on canvas measures 18 1/8" x 22 3/16" without its
period frame. Sold along with this lot was a group of books and
ephemera about World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), where
this painting had been exhibited.