86 / 245
14-B Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- auction -
The $189,600 paid for this cast
bronze Ming Dynasty statue
towered over the sale. The fig-
ure of Guanyin, the bodhisattva
of compassion, is 33 5/8" tall
with a detachable lotus base.
She is shown seated in the classic
dhyanasana
or lotus position, with
her hand raised in the
abhaya
mudra pose of fearlessness, and
her tiara contained a small fig-
ure of the Buddha. According
to the catalog, an inscription on
the base translated as “respect-
fully made during the 10th year
of Ming dynasty Hongzhi reign
by servant Yao Ju,” which would
date it to about 1497.
Bidding was strongest at the top end of a selection
of about 40 weathervanes. A 29" long leaping stag,
probably by Washburne or J. W. Fiske, from the
early 20th century, with a zinc head and copper
body more than doubled the estimate at $14,220. A
small, full-bodied gilt copper pig, only 18½" long,
attributed to Cushing & White, edged just past
the low estimate for $15,405. And a 41" long L. W.
Cushing grasshopper, pictured in Cushing’s 1852
catalog and retaining well more than half of its gilt
surface, ended up at $33,180.
Among the artworks, the two highest-profile
misfires came on these oils on canvas by West-
ern artist Howard A. Terpning (b. 1927). Terp-
ning is one of America’s best-known painters
and illustrators of Native American scenes.
He also created over 80 movie posters, includ-
ing those for
Doctor Zhivago
,
The Sound of
Music
, and
The Guns of Navarone
. Around
1974, he began devoting himself full time to
paintings of the American West. Each of these
works,
Searching the Mountains
(right) and
Spring Came Early
, bore a dedication to Norm
Flayderman on the reverse. With estimates of
$200,000/300,000 and $175,000/275,000, nei-
ther one found buyers.
William and Mary chest
with ball and trumpet
feet, in a later dry red
paint finish, maple, with
pine secondary wood,
$7110.
This framed 19th- or early
20th-century
Tibetan
thangka, 44¾" x 29",
depicts Sakyamuni Bud-
dha, the seminal figure of
Buddhism, who is believed
to have lived between the
sixth and fourth centuries
B.C. The painting wildly
exceeded the $1000/1500
estimate and closed at
$13,585.
Apparently it took considerable
scrutiny for the signature on
this romantically Luminist 33"
x 47" oil on canvas of a family
encampment on a Mediterra-
nean shore, possibly the Bay of
Naples, to reveal itself as that
of Johann Georg Gmelin (Ger-
man, 1810-1854). The identifi-
cation was sufficient to push the
painting past the $6000/12,000
estimate to $18,960.