Maine Antique Digest, December 2016

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12-A Maine Antique Digest, December 2016
Margot Johnson Is Back
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Eight years after Margot Johnson
closed her gallery at 65th Street and
Lexington Avenue and announced her
retirement, she is back in New York City
with a new gallery at 17 East 70th Street
specializing in furniture and decorative
arts made for the Gilded Age in the last
half of the 19th century.
“I absolutely love these things; I have
always collected them myself,” she said
while seated in a Pottier & Stymus arm-
chair, surrounded by carved and gilded
bronze ladies and surveying a large room
filled with assorted cabinets, consoles,
chairs, and tables by Christian Herter and
by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and two tables
by Pottier & Stymus, both with elabo-
rately inlaid tops by the French marquetry
master Joseph Cremer.
“I missed working with these master-
pieces, and I have a feeling that the market
for Aesthetic Movement furniture is com-
ing back,” she said when asked why she
had returned to the market now. “Prices
are much less than the last time around,”
she said. “Christie’s sale in December did
better than I thought it would, and Stair
has been selling this period well. I have
been watching the market carefully, buy-
ing a masterpiece or two now and then
and selling it to a museum, and I got
bored. I wanted to do more.”
An apartment for rent sign gave her
the impetus to return to the trade. “Last
June when I came back from our house
in France, there was a for rent sign on the
apartment next door,” she said. “It is per-
fect for a gallery.”
Her instincts may be right. The very
first week after she opened her new gal-
lery in October she had reserve tags on
seven pieces of furniture, and a week
later four of them had been sold, all to
museums.
Johnson has always been on top of the
goings-on in the marketplace. “In the
last years I have put all my energy into
restoring our fourteenth-century house in
France; I furnished it with the simplest
Herter Brothers,” she said.
Collecting is her passion. “I fell in
love with the furnishings of the Gilded
Age when my cousin Marilynn Johnson
asked me to proofread the catalog for the
Metropolitan Museum 1970 centennial
exhibition 19th Century America: Furniture and Other
Decorative Arts.” Much of the scholarship in that cat-
alog was new. The Met had acquired about half of the
objects expressly for the exhibit, and they ranged from
Federal furniture to Greene & Greene and included all
the revivals: Gothic, Rococo, and Renaissance. John-
son got into this market on the ground level and made
furniture of the Gilded Age her life’s work, traveling
anywhere a piece of interest surfaced.
“Give me a year to see if I am prescient about the
revival of this marketplace,” she said.
For more information, call Margot Johnson at (646)
512-0014.
This circa 1870 center table with an ebon-
ized cherry and walnut base with original
gilt incising is by Pottier & Stymus, New
York. It is 31½" high with a 36" x 55" top.
Its colorful marquetry top was made by
Joseph Cremer (1811-1878), the premier
maker of fine marquetry in Paris from 1839
to 1878. Its central design of two tigers in a
jungle drinking at a stream is surrounded
by a wide, leafy border with two urns and
with writhing snakes at each end. It is on
reserve for a major museum. It is $175,000.
Margot Johnson is not the only one who believes
that Aesthetic Movement items are back on the
“need it / want it / buy it” horizon. Dealer Jill
Fenichell of Brooklyn, New York, is selling a col-
lection of fine ceramics assembled by a NewYork
state collector, including a vase over 4' tall, dec-
orated by Florence Lewis with a duck-hunting
scene on a ocher ground, that was formerly in the
Harriman Judd collection. Fenichell is also sell-
ing a Martin Brothers floor vase, a Dragon vase
by Royal Worcester, and several examples of Pilk-
ington’s Royal Lancastrian lusterware, including
a Richard Joyce vase with deer alternating with
trees. To see this collection, go to the website (www.
) and click on ceramics and then
19th century. Everything is priced.
This maple, rosewood marquetry, mirror glass, and gilded Herter Brothers
Neo-Grec style console table is 39" x 79" x 21½". It was made for W.H. Van-
derbilt’s first house in New York City, on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street. Written
in script in pencil on top underneath the silk velvet is “W.H. Vanderbilt / 40
(St).” It was in the traveling Herter Brothers exhibition in 1994 and 1995,
shown in New York City, Houston, and Atlanta, and is pictured in the catalog
as #12. There is currently an exhibition on view in the American Wing at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art of furniture made by Herter Brothers for W.H.
Vanderbilt, Christian Herter’s most important client.
This large (53" x 30¼" x 20½") Tiffany
armchair is a unique Japanesque design
that combines the talents of Louis Com-
fort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest, two
of the team of four that formedAssociated
Artists. Samuel Colman and Candace
Wheeler were the other two. The back
panel was carved in India at Lockwood de
Forest’s studio. The original carpet seat
has been replaced with a similar fabric.
London Gallery Files Suit against Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné
From 2009 to 2013 the Mayor Gallery
of London sold 13 works by Agnes
Martin (1912-2004), who was an Abstract
Expressionist and Minimalist painter.
When those artworks were submitted to
the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné,
they were all rejected, causing Mayor
Gallery to issue some refunds. There are
some big numbers involved. Mayor Gal-
lery claimed it has been damaged in the
amount of $7,233,438—the amount paid
by the buyers that has already been or must
be refunded to the buyers.
On October 17 Mayor Gallery filed
suit against the Agnes Martin Catalogue
Raisonné LLC, Arnold Glimcher, Tif-
fany Bell, and unnamed members of the
authentication committee. The lawsuit
details several sales and rejections by the
Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné.
The Mayor Gallery sold Day & Night ,
a 72" x 72" acrylic on canvas, signed “To
Delphine, Agnes Martin, 1961‑64,” to
Jack Levy for $2.9 million in Septem-
ber 2010. In May 2014 Day & Night was
delivered to the Agnes Martin Catalogue
Raisonné. On September 25, 2014, Levy
received notice that Day & Night would
not be included in the Agnes Martin
Catalogue Raisonné. After the rejection,
Mayor Gallery honored its warranty of
authenticity, took back the picture, and
refunded Levy his money.
Mayor Gallery wanted to resubmit the
picture to the committee and correct errors
in the provenance and to add more infor-
mation, including an exhibition history, a
photo of Day & Night with Agnes Martin
in the foreground, and more. According
to court papers, James Mayor met person-
ally with Tiffany Bell, editor of the Agnes
Martin Catalogue Raisonné, in New York
City. Mayor asked for names of the mem-
bers of the authentication committee but
was told they were “confidential.” Mayor
also questioned Arnold Glimcher’s bona
fides. (Glimcher, who formed the Agnes
Martin Catalogue Raisonné and is a man-
aging member, is the owner of Pace Gal-
lery in New York City, which represents
the estate of Agnes Martin.)
Mayor also asked “whether the art
world should refuse to cooperate and
support Agnes Martin Catalogue Rai-
sonné. He was concerned that Glim-
cher’s obvious conflicts of interest, and
the longstanding frictions and disagree-
ments that existed between him and
Glimcher, prevented an objective and fair
vetting of submitted artworks, including
of Day & Night ,” the suit states.
Mayor was told it was unnecessary to
resubmit Day & Night , and it was rejected
again.
In 2009 Patricia and Frank Kolodny
bought an untitled work by Martin from
Mayor Gallery for $240,000. The ink and
yellow wash on paper was signed and
dated “A. Martin ’59.” Johanna Kolodny,
who was given the picture, submitted it
to the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné
on August 2015. A letter dated Novem-
ber 24, 2015, from the Agnes Martin
Catalogue Raisonné rejected the picture.
Kolodny has held on to the painting and
received no refund, but according to the
suit will retain ownership “only until and
if” Mayor Gallery can establish that it is
“authentic and marketable.”
Sybil Shainwald bought The Invisible ,
a 1957 graphite on paper, signed and
titled by Agnes Martin, for $180,000 in
December 2012. In August 2015 it was
rejected by the Agnes Martin Catalogue
Raisonné. Mayor Gallery refunded Shain-
wald’s money.
Pierre de Labouchère bought ten Mar-
tin works from Mayor Gallery in 2013,
all acrylic on canvas, for approximately
$3,625,000. When submitted to the Agnes
Martin Catalogue Raisonné in 2014, they
were all rejected. Labouchère considered
demanding a refund but is holding on to
the works for now.
Mayor Gallery has asked for further
information regarding the rejections and
has received no answer. Its complaint
alleges product disparagement and notes
that statements made in the rejections
thus signal to the art world that the art-
works “were fakes.” The gallery also
alleges tortious interference with contract
and with prospective business relations,
and negligent misrepresentation.
Mayor Gallery signed an examination
agreement when it wanted to resubmit
Day & Night with further documentation.
That agreement indemnified the Agnes
Martin Catalogue Raisonné, the commit-
tee members, and more. “No legal action
or legal claim of any kind shall be made
by you against AMCR and the AMCR
companies and Personnel based upon this
agreement,” one of the clauses reads.
The New York State Senate has passed
twice a protection bill for art authentica-
tors—in June 2015 (vote, 61-1) and April
2016 (59-1). The bill, however, hasn’t
moved out of the Assembly’s Cultural
Affairs, Tourism, Parks and Recreation
Committee. The bill, sponsored by Sen-
ator Betty Little, would ensure that art
authenticators practicing in good faith
would be granted protection under the
law and would specify that any claims
against authenticators be proven by “clear
and convincing evidence.”