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Maine Antique Digest, May 2015 15-B
- auction -
A 17" x 21" (sight size) oil on canvas by Massachusetts and Maine
artist Charles Woodbury (1864-1940) of turn-of-the-century
women bathers in the surf, with two Vose Galleries labels on the
reverse, easily topped the $10,000/15,000 estimate and finished at
$26,662.50, a very strong price for a Woodbury of this size.
A collaborative effort by American artist Lambert Sachs
(1818-1903) and German landscape painter Paul Gottlieb
Weber (1823-1916) produced this 36" x 32" (sight size) oil on
panel of George Washington kneeling in prayer with his sword
at his feet and a pensive Quaker named Mr. Potts peering from
behind the bushes. It was inscribed on the reverse in ink “Geo.
Washington in prayer at Valley Forge / by Lambert Sachs,
landscape Paul Weber.” It was accompanied by a hand-colored
lithograph of the same scene by Peter Kramer, published by P.
S. Duval & Co. in 1854. Together, the lithograph and the paint-
ing from which it was taken brought $53,917.50, well below the
$70,000/80,000 estimate.
When thinking of New Hampshire artist Frank Henry Shapleigh
(1842-1906), you might not necessarily think of coastal Massachu-
setts seascapes. He did produce a number of them, though, including
this scene titled on the reverse in the artist’s hand “Cohasset Har-
bor from Kent’s Rocks / by / F. H. Shapleigh” and signed and dated
lower right “F. H. Shapleigh 1874.” The 8" x 12½" (sight size) work
sold under the $10,000/15,000 estimate for $5925.
Nineteenth-century famille rose
bottle vase, 11½" high, with bats
and butterflies flying amid swirls
of green and teal foliage and a
six-character Jiaqing mark. Under-
estimated at $500/700, it finished up
at $12,350.
A slip-painted dog effigy pot showing no
apparent damage came from the private
local history museum formerly run by
George Greene (d. 2014) in Phenix City,
Alabama. According to family history, it
was dug from the Neisler Mound in Tay-
lor County, Georgia, in 1928. It appears
to be closely related to other similar arti-
facts retained by the Columbus (Georgia)
Museum of Arts and Science that came
from the Bull Creek site in Muscogee
County, Georgia, in 1937. In an article
accompanying the pot, Gary C. Daniels
suggested that the dog is a Chihuahua
and that the black-painted swirls suggest
that the pot was associated with the Creek
Indian Wind clan, further suggesting that
there was trade between the Creek Indi-
ans and Mexican peoples. The final price
was $29,625.
A mid-18th-century Queen Anne
looking glass with an attached brass
candle sconce, elongated broken
arch top, stepped frame body, and
the glass in two sections cruised past
the $800/1200 estimate to $6813.75.
A 16" x 24" (sight size) unsigned allegorical oil on canvas depicted
Lady Liberty symbolically freeing a slave from his shackles while
offering a drink to a mother and her child. There must have been more
to it than met the eye. It sold for $21,330 with a $1500/2500 estimate.
The 28" x 42" (sight size) oil on canvas
by Solon Francis Montecello Badger
(1873-1919) of the black-hulled three-
masted tea clipper
Sovereign of the Seas
,
as identified by name boards on the ves-
sel’s gunwales, is signed and dated lower
left “S.F.M. Badger / ’99” and signed on
the reverse “S.F.M. Badger / Cha’s’n /
Mass. / ’99,” for his Charlestown loca-
tion. The
Sovereign of the Seas
, built in
1852 in East Boston, was the first sail-
ing ship to travel more than 400 nautical
miles in 24 hours. Her speed record of 22
knots has stood for over 100 years. The
painting was done well after the ship’s
working life ended, and it sold near its
high estimate for $14,220.
RectangularChinese altar table, possibly zitan, 69¼" long,
intricately carved on all the frame surfaces, $58,662.50.