Hannah Otis came from an illustrious family of patriots,
poets, legislators, and business leaders, but she may be remembered
longer than any of her forebears. She made the most expensive needlework
picture ever sold.
She was 21 years old in 1753 when she recorded in stitches a hilly view of Boston, showing every detail of the gambrel-roofed Thomas Hancock house, complete with stone quoins and window lintels, the livestock, and the pets. In the foreground is young John Hancock, astride his horse, a Black groom in attendance. To the right is Beacon Hill with its tar-pot beacon; the church spire is probably the West Church, destroyed in 1776. The neighbors' houses in the distance were later owned by John Singleton Copley around 1769. The fort-like structure flying the British flag has been identified as the only extant rendering of the Block House, destroyed by fire in 1761.
This charming and historically important piece of needlework (est. $300,000/500,000) was bought at Sotheby's on Saturday, January 20 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which had taken care of it since 1954 when it was put on loan there by the Otis family. It cost the museum $1,157,500 with buyer's premium.
When it goes on view at the MFA, this most expensive needlework will likely attract crowds the way Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer did in 1961 when the Metropolitan Museum of Art paid $2.3 million for it and hung in the Great Hall what was then the most expensive picture ever sold at auction.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was determined to buy the needlework, which was consigned to Sotheby's by Martha Gray Otis (b. 1943) and her brother, Samuel Allyne Otis (b. 1940), who felt they could not afford to give it to the museum. "We are happy to have the museum have it; we hated to take it away from them," said Martha Otis after the sale. "My greatest joy, besides being out of debt, is that the Boston museum has it."
It was estate planning that drove the Otises to sell the needlework. "We are not wealthy enough to own it and pay inheritance taxes, and now by the time we pay the capital gains tax, we are not talking about a fortune divided between the eight of us," Martha Otis continued. "I think Hannah Otis, who struggled to support herself, taking in borders and running a shop, would be pleased to know that the monies from the sale of her needlework will give my children and my brother Sam's children a boost when they need it."
Auctioneer William Stahl opened the bidding for the needlework at $170,000. Connecticut dealer Stephen Huber, bidding for a collector, took it to $300,000, bidding against the reserve. Then Jonathan Fairbanks, curator of American decorative arts at the MFA, standing on the far left side of the gallery, raised his paddle, bidding $310,000. He battled Huber to $840,000, when Huber shook his head.
Then Nancy Druckman, head of Sotheby's folk art department, on the phone with a client, entered the competition, raising Fairbanks's bids. Druckman bid $1 million. Fairbanks raised his paddle at $1,050,000, and that was enough. The audience gasped and then applauded as Stahl knocked the lot down to Fairbanks's paddle 884. The bill came to $1,157,500.
Martha Otis ran over and embraced Fairbanks, who, amid congratulations, said, "A lot of people helped us." The primary donor is said to be Edward C. (Ned) Johnson, chairman of Fidelity Investments, Boston. The underbidder on the phone was probably the New York collector who had paid the previous record price for a needlework, $198,500 for a folk art sampler by Ruthy Rogers, a Marblehead, Massachusetts, girl, which sold at Robert Skinner's in June 1987, and who also paid a record $374,000 for schoolgirl art when he bought a watercolor of Aurora on silk at Christie's in 1989. Both records are now shattered. This new record, surpassing the needlework record by nearly $1 million, is not likely to be broken.
Needlework historian Betty Ring acknowledged that the Hannah Otis chimney piece is the most important colonial schoolgirl embroidery that we know because it so historically significant. "We don't know of anything like it," she said, "But who knows. With a price like this, in sixty or ninety days another might pop right out of the woodwork."
Several other pieces of schoolgirl needlework brought strong prices at Sotheby's on January 20. A silk embroidered mourning picture signed Love Lusk, from the Abby Wright School in South Hadley, Massachusetts, went at $26,450 to Marguerite Riordan for a collector. It had been miscataloged as being from Miss Patten's School in Hartford, Connecticut, and estimated at $6000/8000. A needlework sampler signed Sarah Jenckes from Anne Usher's School in Bristol, Rhode Island, went at $20,700 to Stephen and Carol Huber, underbid by Philadelphia dealer Amy Finkel, who, like the Hubers, is a needlework specialist.
Two carved and gilded eagle wall plaques with scrolling banners, shields, and American flags, attributed to John Haley Bellamy of Kittery, Maine, circa 1900, brought forth some good competition. The larger of the two with a 67 inches wingspan sold for $76,750 to Massachusetts dealer Bill Samaha; the smaller, 45 inches wide, brought $14,950.
Only a few other lots excited interest in a rather lackluster folk art sale. A grasshopper weathervane from the Alice Kaplan collection sold to a collector for $24,150. Chicago collector/dealer Frank Pollack paid $23,000 for a circa 1825 red-painted tole cookie box made in Pennsylvania. The best of a small group of frakturs, one decorated with an American eagle with outspread wings in a roundel flanked by two birds and dated 1828 sold for $19,500 to Baltimore dealer Millie McGehee, who outbid several Pennsylvania dealers.
Folk paintings had a hard time. An Emma Cady still life sold on the phone for $19,550, but most of the portraits offered failed to find buyers. Among the few that sold was a portrait of a lady in a gray dress and a lace bonnet by Royall Brewster Smith (est. $7000/10,000) that fetched $5750. A William Matthew Prior oil of a dark-haired girl wearing a black dress with lace trim sold for $11,500 (est. $12,000/18,000). And Wayne Pratt topped the $8000 estimate to pay $9775 for an anonymous double portrait of a dark-haired boy wearing a black jacket and a dark-haired girl in a red dress.
The bidding did not go high enough to sell a Baltimore album quilt, and it was passed at $65,000 (est. $70,000/90,000). An Ohio Blazing Star quilt fetched $1610, and an unusual round hooked rug from the Alice Kaplan collection made $5175, topping its $3000 high estimate.
With two exceptions, Outsider art generally brought disappointing prices or failed to sell. The stars were Sandlot Game, a baseball picture by Ralph Fasanella that sold for $41,400, the most expensive lot of folk art in the sale, and William Hawkins's 48 inches x 56 inches Carousel Lion, 1989, for $28,750. Two bright Jack Savitsky paintings topped their estimates, Reading Train at $3737.50 to the phone and Silver Creek at $2300, but his Breaker Boys (est. $1200/1800) went at $1150.
Howard Finster's paintings generally sold below estimates. Four Presidents, enamel on wood, brought $6900 ($7000/ 10,000); his self-portraits, each pitched at $1500/2000, fetched $1150, $990, and $2185; but Mr. Coke made $1380. Vestie Davis's nostalgic pictures topped their estimates, the 1976-dated Steeplechase Park for $5175 and Coney Island-Luna Park for $3742.50. The classic works, Bill Traylor's colored pencil on cardboard Figures and an Owl around a Basket and Edgar Tolson's Temptation in the Garden of Eden, failed to sell.
On Saturday morning, 185 (72 of the 255 folk art lots on offer were sold. Seventy failed to find buyers.
The various-owners session of furniture and decorations on Sunday, January 21 had more energy and was 91sold by lot; 350 of the 382 lots found buyers. It was, however, back to reality and business as usual after the electricity of the Meyer sale on Saturday afternoon .
The Sunday sale opened with the Larson collection of early New England furniture and accessories. The Larsons had moved a Connecticut saltbox house to Oklahoma and furnished it appropriately with 17th- and early 18th-century antiques, which they bought on their annual visits to New England. This portion of the sale did quite well.
A bun-footed chest of drawers with paint decoration of red scrolls on a silver blue ground was everyone's favorite piece, and it sold to a phone bidder for $129,000, well over its $30,000/ 50,000 estimate. A burled walnut flat-top high chest with cabriole legs and pad feet sold to Israel Sack, Inc. for $65,750. A figured maple joint stool doubled its estimate to bring $17,250.
Banister-back chairs brought strong prices. A pair of black-painted rush-seated side chairs made $12,075, nearly four times expectations; another pair of maple painted side chairs with carved crests sold for $10,350; and a single paint-decorated side chair, attributed to Thomas Gaines, Ipswich, Massachusetts, 1740-70, fetched $23,000. Not since Christie's Lillian Blankley Cogan sale in September 1993 has there been such a large selection of early seating in the market, and prices were slightly higher than three years ago.
A 1730-60 turned maple gate-leg table brought a strong $63,000, about twice expectations. Another gate-leg table with a replaced drawer fetched $13,800, and an oval drop-leaf table with pad feet and a few minor repairs made $14,950.
A Pennsylvania walnut hutch cupboard went at $60,500 to a phone bidder, and another phone bidder paid $78,000 for a Boston wing chair, 1735-50. Eight tin and glass lanterns sold for $8050 instead of the $800 expected. The buy of the sale, however, was a group of copper and wrought-iron cooking pots, all recently tinned, that sold for $3450. Included were 11 handled pans of various sizes, a large covered roasting pot, four bowls, seven lids, five food molds, and a fish poacher. Pat Guthman had such a collection at the Philadelphia show last year for ten times as much.
There was plenty of bidding on a Chinese export Canton service, and the 129 pieces sold for $13,800. A late 17th-century dummy board in the form of a seated child sold for $9200, three times its high estimate. A 1730-70 New England rush-seated ladder-back armchair with mushroom handholds fetched $9775, and a green and red painted comb-back Windsor armchair went to David Schorsch at $13,225.
A few lots in the various-owners sale drew keen competition. Six yellow spatterware thistle plates sold for $11,500 to a phone bidder. A bound set of The Magazine Antiques was a good buy at $5750. A pair of unpolished brass and wrought-iron andirons, New York or Boston, sold for $19,550, nearly doubling the high estimate, while a fancier engraved pair of brass andirons, probably English-made for the American market, went at $43,700 to New York dealer Leigh Keno. Keno bought a similar pair last May at the Sandwich (Massachusetts) Auction House for $52,250, a record for a pair of andirons.
Dee Dee Brooks took over the hammer for the last 150 lots of American furniture and got to sell the highest-priced piece of the day. A circa 1810 swivel-top mahogany and rosewood caryatid card table with gilt-metal mounts and a winged figure as its central support, labeled by Charles Honoré Lannuier, brought $310,500 from Atlanta dealer Deanne Levison, bidding for a client.
The big discovery of Americana week was a previously unknown
American silver pierced cake basket with the "BR" touchmark
in an oval, signifying Bartholomew Le Roux II. The Livingston family
coat of arms is engraved in the bottom of the basket, and a cast scallop
shell crest is on the handle. It is believed to have been made for
Peer VanBrugh Livingston, Revolutionary patriot and a merchant in
the shipping business. Only two other American cake or bread baskets
are known, both made in New York, one by Daniel Christian Fueter and
the other by Myer Myers, and both shown in the 1992 rococo exhibition
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum.
The bidding for the cake basket opened at $60,000 and closed at $100,000. Putnam Valley, New York, dealer Jonathan Trace, who seemed to be the only one interested, bought it for a client and paid $112,500, considered a good buy. The problem seemed to be that not everyone believed it was indeed made in New York, even though Leslie Bowman and Morrison Heckscher suggested in the rococo exhibition catalog that a specialist in piercing must have been active in New York, since most American pierced silver was made there. The other pierced baskets, like the Le Roux basket, have heavy cast borders and openwork bodies. Bowman and Heckscher acknowledge that London-made baskets were owned in the Colonies by the Hancocks of Boston, the Lloyds of Maryland, the Byrds of Virginia, and the Franks of Philadelphia who had one made by Paul de Lamerie.
"Why would an English silversmith not mark his basket?" asked Sotheby's Kevin Tierney, who believes the basket was indeed made in New York and is not an English basket imported and marked by a New York silversmith.
Jonathan Trace has no reservations. "The work is not London work," he said. "It has a New York feel."
The other rarity in Sotheby's Friday morning silver session was an American Gothic Revival partially gilt silver and enamel chalice and paten made by Francis W. Cooper and Richard Fisher in New York in 1855. It is similar to a communion set made for Trinity Church in New York City, which was included in the 1987 exhibition "Marks of Achievement: Four Centuries of American Presentation Silver," for which Gerald Ward wrote the catalog introduction. New Hampshire dealer/auctioneer Ron Bourgeault, sitting next to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston curator Ward, bought the lot for $36,800, so it was no surprise to learn he was bidding for the MFA. The purchase was made in honor of American decorative arts curator Jonathan Fairbanks's 25 years of service. The underbidder was David Hanks, bidding for the High Museum in Atlanta.
A rare Gothic silver and silver-gilt flatware service designed by Charles T. Grosjean for Tiffany in 1887 (est. $30,000/50,000) sold for $28,750 to New York dealers Hoffman-Gampetro. And other Tiffany silver brought strong prices. A seven-piece tea and coffee service with a matching two-handled tray, 562 troy ounces in all, sold to a collector for $41,400, and a mixed-metal hexafoil tazza in the Japanese style sold to a collector for $21,850. A large Tiffany punch bowl decorated with sailing ships, weighing 253 ounces, brought $20,700 from a New York collector. And there was intense bidding for a silver sauceboat and stand from the famous Mackay service, made circa 1877 when Tiffany's cost of manufacture was $267.23, that sold to a private collector for $19,550.
A Gorham Martelé centerpiece on stand, signed W.C. Codman, 1909, sold on the phone for $25,300. According to Gorham records, the cost of manufacture was $300, and the 84 hours of chasing was an additional $220. Atlanta dealer Beverly Bremer bought a two-handled Gorham Martelé cup, also signed W.C. Codman, for $18,400. The cup had been chased by Robert Bain, the best chaser in the company, who spent 285 hours on it; the factory price was $600.
New York dealer Eric Shrubsole bought two pieces of colonial American silver, paying $27,600 for a large coffeepot by Bancroft Woodcock, Wilmington, Delaware, and $24,300 for a 1760-70 silver tankard by John David, Philadelphia. Baltimore dealer Stiles Colwill paid $14,950 for an 1814 silver meat platter by Philadelphia silversmith Thomas Fletcher, which was presented to Commodore John Rogers by the citizens of Baltimore in testimony of their "Sense of the important aid afforded by him in the defense of Baltimore on the 12th and 13th of Septr. 1814."
Seventy-seven lots of silver sold, and 15 failed to find buyers, giving a respectable 83.7% sold figure.
The Friday afternoon print session found bidders winning 133 of the 187 lots, giving 71.12% sold by lot. Audubons brought the big prices as usual, but a collector paid $11,500 for a 1759 hand-colored engraving by Thomas Johnson, an historic view of Quebec, The Capital of New-France…; it is the earliest engraved view of Quebec. Among the Audubons, an American Flamingo sold for $46,000 to a collector, a Trumpeter Swan made $37,375 from a private buyer, and a dealer paid $21,850 for a Canada Goose and $12,650 for an Eider Duck. The Currier and Ives Autumn in New England. Cider Making sold for $16,100.
Sotheby's began selling from its 916-lot various-owners Americana catalog on Friday, January 19 with American silver followed by American prints. The sale continued on Saturday morning with folk art and the Meyer sale in the afternoon, and it ended on Sunday afternoon with furniture and decorations. Of the 916 lots offered in the latter session, 745 sold and 171 were bought in, giving a 91.33% sold figure by lot for a total of $2,893,847. Add the $6,106,702 grand total for the various-owners catalog to the $11.1 total for the Meyer sale, and the three days come to $17,289,239. Add to that the $1,026,145 achieved from the Chinese export porcelain sale and the $1,272,452 from the Arcade sale, and Sotheby's total goes to nearly $19,587,836 for the week.