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978-779-6241 x260 |
978-779-6241 x231 |
SKINNER TO HOST TWO-SESSION AUCTION
OF PAINTINGS AND PRINTS ON NOVEMBER 19TH
Highlights Include Rediscovered Fitz Hugh Lane Painting, Sporting Art,
and Deaccessions from the Fuller Museum of Art
BOSTON, Mass. - October 28, 2004 – www.skinnerinc.com - Skinner, Inc., one of the nation's leading auction houses for antiques and fine art, will host an auction of paintings and prints on November 19th at its Boston location at 63 Park Plaza. It is a two-session sale that is certain to attract widespread attention. The auction will open at 4 p.m. with offerings that will delight fishermen, hunters, and other outdoor enthusiasts with its nearly 100 lots of sporting-related paintings, prints, and sculpture. Following will be an auction of American and European paintings and sculpture at 6 p.m., highlighted by a recently rediscovered painting by American Luminist Fitz Hugh Lane, and works by Robert Spear Dunning, William Bradford, Maxfield Parrish, and Norman Rockwell, among others. Selections also will include works deaccessioned from the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, Massachusetts.
Sporting Art
The sale launches with an unusually fine selection of sporting works of art. Important offerings include Untitled/A Surprise Encounter (lot 58, $45/55,000) by Philip Russell Goodwin, depicting two trackers in a chance encounter with a bear. (Bears were Goodwin's favorite animal subject, and he painted them many times.) Goodwin is one of the most famous sporting and wildlife illustrators. The greatest influence of his early training was Howard Pyle, and it was through Pyle that Goodwin was commissioned to illustrate Jack London's Call of the Wild in 1903. Goodwin opened his own studio in New York the following year, where he created illustrations for Outdoor Life and Collier's Weekly, as well as covers for the Saturday Evening Post and numerous posters, calendars, and advertisements.
Also of note are two watercolors on paper by Aiden Lassell Ripley: lot 39, Downward Flight, and lot 43, Lone Woodcock ($20/30,000 and $12/15,000 respectively). Of interest to hunting enthusiasts are several lots from private collections, including Out Shooting (lot 53, $20/30,000) by Arthur Burdett Frost, Whipping in the Straggler (lot 54, $20/30,000) by Frederic Remington, and Steady, Woodcock Shooting by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (lot 32, $40/50,000).
For the sport fisherman, the auction features a unique carved and painted wood relief panel by Leander Allen Plummer II. Entitled Striped Bass (lot 83A, $20/25,000), the piece is signed and dated "LA Plummer 1904" and was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Plummer worked initially as a mining engineer, but by 1883 was already changing direction, spending four years studying at the Academie Julian. As an avid fisherman and sportsman, he often turned to the wildlife of his native New Bedford, Massachusetts for his subject matter. Having a great aptitude for wood carving as well as painting, Plummer began creating what he termed his "relief paintings;" carved and stain painted wooden panels. At the invitation of F. A. Whiting, who had seen Plummer's carvings at Doll and Richards Gallery in Boston, Plummer submitted three works for inclusion in the St. Louis Exposition, from which Striped Bass was selected.
Also featured are 22 works deaccessioned by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc. in New York. Themes include fishing and wildlife. Many of the works were reproduced in the Seagram's Sportsman's Calendar, including Stone's Carabou[sic] by Bob (Robert F.) Kuhn (lot 66A, $15/25,000). And, for collectors of Frank W. Benson etchings and drypoints, the auction offers 17 lots, including several figural pieces, which are always desirable. Also for sale are seven lots of work done by artists who participate in the Spindleworks program in Maine - a program offering studio space and materials to mentally challenged adults.
Fitz Hugh Lane
The second session of the auction offers a rare gem: a recently rediscovered painting by one of the foremost American marine painters of the nineteenth century, Fitz Hugh Lane. The oil on canvas, Manchester Harbor, was consigned to Skinner from a west coast family, and is estimated at $650/850,000. The work is signed and dated "F.H. Lane 1853", and includes a partial exhibition label, perhaps written in Lane's hand, on the reverse. The work measures 24 x 36 inches and is in the original frame. The painting was originally acquired by Thomas J. Herring (1825-1895), a Boston slater. In October of 1847, T. J. Herring was married on Nantucket to Winnifred Bunker Folger (1830-1868), a descendent of Peter Folger, the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. The work descended through the family to the present day owner. The painting was included in the Thirtieth Exhibition of Paintings and Statuary, at the Athenaeum Gallery in Boston, Mass. in 1857. The work is noted in the exhibition catalogue, page 15, number 329, lent by T.J. Herring. A photocopy of this catalogue accompanies the lot.
Fitz Hugh Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and spent much of his youth sketching the Cape Ann shore, north of Boston. He apprenticed with William S. Pendleton, the Boston lithography firm, in the early 1830s, specializing in topographic views. In the 1840s, Lane probably saw the works of Robert Salmon and Washington Allston in Boston, and it was at this time that he decided to concentrate on painting. His paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s reflect his earlier graphics training, in conjunction with the influence of the marine artists of an earlier generation. Seen in Manchester Harbor are foreground details with figures, piers, and spits of land that set the scale for the work while accentuating the vastness of the view and its light. The low placement of the horizon line allows for an expansive sky. Tinted with the warm hues of sunrise and reflected in the calm waters, the light becomes the focus of the work, as is typical of Luminism. The horizontal arrangement of the composition creates stillness in spite of the activity of the foreground. In conjunction with the concentration of light around a sun viewed through clouds just above the horizon, Manchester Harbor foreshadows the increasing calm and poetry of Lane's mature Luminist style as it would emerge in the late 1850s.
In 1997, Skinner set a world record price for a Fitz Hugh Lane painting when it sold Lane's View of West Beach, Beverly, Massachusetts, Sunset for $3.8 million.
Fuller Museum of Art
A significant selection of paintings in this auction comes to the block from the collection of the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, Mass. Based on a decision to change the focus of the Museum's collections, the Board of Directors and membership voted to deaccess works of art no longer fitting the museum's focus, and offer them at public auction. Proceeds from the sale will be used only for the acquisition or direct care of future collections in the Museum. After careful consideration, Skinner was selected to auction an initial group of fifty-six paintings.
Highlights from this collection include Winter Dusk (lot 267, $75/150,000) by Maxfield Parrish. Parrish is one of the early twentieth century's best known painters. Combining romanticism, glowing colors, and realistic treatment of figures, he illustrated several books, and also received numerous commissions for calendars and magazines. His reputation even attracted other artists to his home near Cornish, New Hampshire.
Other offerings include paintings as varied as Robert Spear Dunning's Still Life with Peaches and Grapes (lot 250, $15/25,000), William Rimmer's Child Leading Man (lot 239, $30/50,000 Portrait of George E. Belcher by Edmund Charles Tarbell (lot 275, $15/25,000), and Larchmont (lot 241, $8/12,000) by Antonio Jacobsen. Marine paintings also include Arthur Clifton Goodwin's T Wharf, Boston (lot 263, $10/15,000).
Additional Highlights
Additional noteworthy paintings in the sale include four by New Bedford, Massachusetts artist, William Bradford: The Returning Fishermen Off Cape St. John (lot 354, $30/50,000), Artic Ice field under the Midnight Sun, A Sketch (lot 355, $30/50,000), Coastal Rocks, A Sketch (lot 357, $25/35,000), and Sunset Harbor (lot 358, $15/25,000). Bradford was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1823, and started painting in 1852. From his studio overlooking the harbor, he painted portraits of the ships that were coming into New Bedford as part of the lucrative whaling business. He continued this type of painting in Boston, where he painted much larger clipper ships. In 1854, he decided to focus more on marine scenes, coastal views, and scenes of ships in distress, and in the 1860s, embarked on several voyages to Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Artic.
Highlights also include Victor Mature as Samson/A Poster Maquette by Norman Rockwell (lot 477, $28/32,000), a work that descended through the family of the original collector. The painting, a sketch for a larger piece by the same name that was in the collection of Cecil B. DeMille, was given by Rockwell to the original owner, who lived in the artist's former studio. Also featured are three works by John Fabian Carlson: Derelicts, Kingston, New York (lot 423, $18/22,000), Winter River (lot 427, $8/12,000), The Mill buildings, Winter (lot 428, $2/4,000), all from a private New York collection. Carlson is best known for his winter landscapes, executed in a tonalist mode and capturing the constantly shifting light of nature and its resulting emotive qualities. Movement - Wave on Beach by John Marin (lot 451, $20/25,000), Curious Kittens by Alfred Arthur Brunel de Neuville (lot 218, $3/5,000), and Une Femme Accroupie de Profil (lot 497, $2/4,000), one of five drawings by Aristide Maillol in the sale, are among other highlights, as well as selected works by North Shore, Cape, and Provincetown artists.
Web site, Catalogue and Preview Information
Previews for the auction will be 12 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, November 17th, 12 to 7 p.m., Thursday, November 18th, and 12 to 3 p.m. Friday, November 19th. Illustrated catalogue #2260 is available by mail for $32 ($39 for foreign requests) from the subscription department at 978-779-6241 x240. It is sold at the gallery for $29. Prices realized will be available at www.skinnerinc.com during and after the sale. For more information, visit www.skinnerinc.com. Skinner's site also allows users to view all lots in the auctions, leave bids, and order catalogues online.
Note to Editors: Photos available upon request. Contact Catherine Riedel at 978-779-6241 x 231.
About Skinner:With galleries in Boston and Bolton, Mass., Skinner is a full-service auctioneer and appraiser of antiques and fine art. Regularly seen on the PBS series, Antiques Roadshow, Skinner is one of the nation’s leading auction houses. Skinner conducts auctions year-round and has received world-record prices for many pieces sold at auction. Departments include American Furniture & Decorative Arts, Paintings & Prints, English & Continental Furniture & Decorations, Fine Ceramics, Jewelry, Couture, 20th Century Furniture & Decorative Arts, Fine Musical Instruments, Asian Art, Fine Judaica, Toys, Dolls & Collectibles, Science & Technology, Oriental Rugs & Carpets, American Indian & Ethnographica, and Discovery. For more information on upcoming auctions, visit Skinner’s web site www.skinnerinc.com.