Maine Antique Digest, April 2017

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4-B Maine Antique Digest, April 2017
- AUCTION -
4-B
sale found buyers. A View of West Rutland sold on the
phone for $18,750 (est. $8000/12,000), but a smaller
(12" x 16") view of blue hills in the distance and a
small bridge sold for only $2500 (est. $5000/7000). The
marketplace prefers his earlier paintings to his more
academic style. According to the sale catalog, Ralph
and Susanne Katz are working on an article about James
Hope titled “Before He Got Too Good: James Hope, The
Early Vermont Landscapes.”
There was selective bidding on the 60 portraits
in the sale. Collectors and two museums were the
buyers. A collector in the salesroom spent $56,250 (est.
$40,000/60,000) for Ammi Phillips’s portrait of a Young
Lady in a Blue and White Dress , circa 1814. Leigh Keno,
sitting in the salesroom with clients, paid $50,000 (est.
$25,000/35,000) for John Usher Parsons’s Portrait of a
Lady in a Blue Dress, circa 1835. It is a portrait of Sarah
F. Hobbs, an older woman full of character. The Shelburne
Museum bought the pair of portraits of Mrs. Elizabeth
Powers Darrow and Stephen Powers that were painted by
Noah North in Holley, New York, in 1834. The museum
paid $22,500 (est. $15,000/20,000). The Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Colonial Williamsburg
bought the portrait of Eliza Jamison of Virginia holding
her music book that was painted by Thomas Jefferson
Wright in 1831. The museum paid $20,000. Williamsburg
is collecting works made in Virginia.
Five of the seven paintings by Thomas Chambers (one
was attributed) in the sale found buyers. There were two
paintings titled New York Harbor with Castle Garden
and Ships. The larger oil on canvas, circa 1840, sold for
$37,500 (est. $30,000/50,000). The four other Chambers
paintings sold for prices ranging from $6250 to $15,000.
The Capture of the H.B.M. Frigate “Macedonian” by
the U.S.S “United States” on October 25, 1812 failed
to sell. It had sold at Sotheby’s in January 2006 for
$108,000 (est. $25,000/50,000). The estimate this time
was $80,000/120,000.
The sale was not a huge success Only 112 of the 158
lots sold, and the sale was 70.9% sold by lot and 67.5%
by value. It is not that interest in folk art is waning.
Members of the Folk Art Society of America were at the
sale, but they complained about condition and quality.
The pictures and captions show some of what was
embraced. For more information, call Sotheby’s
Americana department at (212) 606-7130 or go online
).
These oil on panel portraits of Mrs. Elizabeth Powers Darrow
and Stephen Powers by Noah North (1809-1880), 1834, 28¾" x
24", are signed and inscribed “Holley [NY] 1834,” on the reverse.
Elizabeth’s portrait is also inscribed “Mrs. Elizabeth Darrow born
180… No. 37,” and Stephen’s is inscribed “Stephen Powers born
at Damariscotta New Castle Lincoln Co. Maine, June the 1st, 1814
No. 41.” They sold for $22,500 (est. $15,000/20,000) on the phone to
the Shelburne Museum, Vermont. At an early age Stephen Powers
went to Holley, New York, to live with his sister Elizabeth Powers
Darrow (1805-1874). He became a prominent attorney in New
York and Texas and served as a diplomat in Switzerland. In 1849
he moved to Brownsville, Texas. There he married Pauline Victoire
Impey Butler and raised five children. Portraits of Elizabeth Powers
Darrow’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law are in the collection at the
Shelburne Museum.
This pair of oil on board portraits
by Sturtevant J. Hamblin (1817-
1884) of Phoebe Jewett and
Hannah M. Jewett, 1841, 14¼" x
10", sold on the phone for $27,500
(est. $25,000/30,000). The one
shown left is inscribed “P.L.J.
Aged 21, painted by S.J. Hamblin,
Chamber Street, Boston, 1841,”
and the other is inscribed “H.M.J.
Aged 16 yrs, Painted by S.J.
Hamblin, 1841.” At the sale of
Howard and Catherine Feldman’s
collection at Sotheby’s in June
1988, the portraits sold for
$17,600 (est. $20,000/30,000).
By John Usher Parsons (1806-1874), this Portrait of a
Lady in a Blue Dress is of Sarah F. Hobbs (1801-1884).
The oil on unprimed and unstretched fabric, circa 1835,
32½" x 24¾", sold for $50,000 (est. $25,000/35,000)
to Leigh Keno, sitting between his clients John and
Marjorie McGraw.
The portrait was discovered rolled up in a trunk in
the Hobbs family house. It is one of a small number
of works that Parsons painted 1834-38 while he was
recuperating from an illness. Trained as a medical
doctor and minister in the Parsonsfield, Maine, and
Effingham, New Hampshire, areas, he traveled widely
as a missionary, primarily in the Midwest. Sarah
Hobbs lived in Effingham her entire life and was
related to the artist by marriage. The painting was in
the collection of art historian James Flexner, and it
had sold at Christie’s in January 2004 for $31,070 (est.
$20,000/30,000).
Ammi Phillips’s portrait of a Young Lady in
a Blue and White Dress, 30" x 25", is said
to be of Mary Ann Gale. She is sitting on a
white-painted fancy chair. The circa 1814 oil
on canvas is from Phillips’s “border period,”
when the artist worked along the New York
and Massachusetts border. It sold for $56,250
(est. $40,000/60,000) to a collector in the
salesroom, underbid on the phone.