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Maine Antique Digest, March 2017 17-E
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AUCTION -
17-E
Two works by Vern Broe. Top: a 17½" x 23½" (sight size)
oil on board of a gaff-rigged sailboat in front of a typical
Broe sky treatment ranging from violet to light blue sold
for $1725. Below it is a 15½" x 19½" oil on board of a pair
of catboats near a dock in dusk lighting with a similar sky
treatment; it brought $920.
No one seems to know much about 20th-century American artist
Robert Sanders, but his dramatic 23½" x 35½" marine painting of a
wind-driven sailor being blown toward disaster on a rocky outcropping
proved to be worth $920.
This transitional butler’s chest with strongly grained tiger
maple drawer fronts, a slightly overhung upper drawer,
wooden knobs, and square corner posts went for a middle-of-
the-road $460.
A thorough dose of richly grained tiger maple in just
about everything except the knobs and including the case,
top, and drawer fronts was all it took to bring this simple
bureau from nowhere to $460.
Vern Broe did a small series of oils on panel of young
children in non-bathing summer attire playing in the
gentle surf on a sandy beach. This 15½" x 19½" version
brought $1495.
Arthur James Beaumont (English, 1877-1956) settled on New York’s Staten Island
in 1906 but traveled extensively throughout England, Europe, and New England,
painting pastoral landscapes and marine scenes. Here a rather atypical 17¾" x
27½" oil on canvas of a mother and children tending their country flower garden
brought a modest $172.50.
Cased ship diorama of a
four-masted barquentine
sailing past a lighthouse
and flying both American
and Italian flags, $833.75.
The Italian flag appears
to be the Sardinian civil
ensign, dating the model to
perhaps the third quarter
of the 19th century.
Francis Joseph Quirk (1907-
1974) has scant auction records,
but the Rhode Island-born
artist had an illustrious teaching
career. He graduated from
the Rhode Island School of
Design and went on to hold
professorships in several
colleges and universities,
culminating in a chairmanship
of the Fine Arts Department
of Lehigh University. Signed
and dated lower left “Francis J.
Quirk ’51,” this 25" x 30" oil on
canvas of a family of surf casters
on a rocky coast closed for $690.