Maine Antique Digest, March 2017

16-E Maine Antique Digest, March 2017

AUCTION -

16-E

A set of six (four shown) matching English Chippendale

ribbon-back side chairs in mahogany rang in for an

admirable $1437.50, coming with three additional seat

stretchers.

Prices on utilitarian Colonial American furniture

bottomed out years ago. This desk in walnut with four

graduated drawers, a breadboard writing surface, a

cutout bracket base, and a shell-carved interior door

came up only slightly off the floor at $517.50.

The oil on canvas portrait at left is identified on the

back as “Ptd. by C. Curtis 1853,” indicating Calvin

Curtis (1822-1893) of Connecticut. The subject

is probably his wife, Sarah. The two small oval

portraits above may have been of his parents. His

wife was certainly beautiful, but she wasn’t young

enough and the painting isn’t primitive enough to

get big bucks, even with the inclusion of the two

smaller paintings, and the trio went for a mere $230.

Curtis’s most notable work may be a portrait he

did of Thomas Belden Butler, chief justice of the

Connecticut Supreme Court from 1870 to 1873.

Ship captain’s liquor chest, filled with eight old olive-green gin

bottles in bubbled glass, $632.50.

Louis Eilshemius often populated his paintings with

gremlin-like nymphs. Here are four of his oils on

masonite. Above:

Samoan Landscape, Pago Pago

22½" x 26¼", titled, signed, and dated 1907, brought

$4025. Right, bottom to top: the image of a pair of

bathers under a waterfall at the Delaware Water

Gap, 28½" x 18½", signed lower right, sold for $4600;

Three Flowing Nudes

, depicting weightless water

nymphs riding a waterspout, 20" x 10", went for

$4312.50; and the painting of a trio of bathing sea

nymphs frolicking in frothing surf, signed lower right,

18½" x 24½", brought $6612.50.