Church Painting Brings $353,000

April 1st, 2015

The star lot of the sale, Frederic Edwin Church’s View of Baalbek, circa 1868, sold on the phone to the Detroit Institute of Arts for $353,000. The 9½" x 20" oil and pencil on heavy card had an estimate of $80,000/120,000. The painting had descended in the family of the artist and was gifted to Louise Good Murray of Patton, Pennsylvania, from whom it descended to the consignor. Church (1826-1900) traveled to Baalbek, Lebanon with his wife, Isabel, in May of 1868, as part of a journey through the Holy Land with his mother-in-law and infant son. The city was designated “Heliopolis” (City of the Sun) by Alexander the Great. Church’s painting “panoramically depicts the ruined temple precincts and surroundings at the ancient Roman city of Baalbek, in present-day Lebanon,” wrote Dr. Gerald Carr, an authority on the artist.

Lake Placid, a 9" x 12" watercolor on paper by William Trost Richards (1833-1905), signed “W. T. Richards,” sold on the phone for $8125 (est. $1500/2500). A salesroom notice said the painting is dated “circa 1904.” It depicts Whiteface Mountain to the left, not fully drawn, and relates to the other watercolors of the same subject done in 1904.

A buyer on the phone purchased this giltwood convex mirror, crested with an eagle and supporting two scrolling candle arms above a foliate apron, 46" x 28½", for $4063 (est. $1500/2500).

“Rockport is still strong,” declared Anne Cohen DePietro, Doyle’s director of American art, after the sale. Rockport Harbor by Mathias Joseph Alten (1871-1938), inscribed with the artist’s name, title, and date of 1931 on the backing, sold to a phone bidder for $13,750 (est. $3000/4000). The 14 7/8" x 19" oil on unstretched canvas was authenticated by James A. Straub, who is including it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

Doyle New York, New York City

Photos courtesy Doyle New York

Doyle New York had a big hit with a small Frederic Edwin Church painting, View of Baalbek, when it sold to a phone buyer for $353,000 (includes buyer’s premium) at the auction house’s American paintings, furniture, and decorative arts sale on April 1. The 9½" x 20" oil and pencil on heavy card, painted circa 1868, had an estimate of $80,000/120,000.

The buyer was the Detroit Institute of Arts. “The DIA purchased Frederic Edwin Church’s View of Baalbek, a superb study that relates directly to a major Church exhibition that we are organizing as well as to a major painting by Church already in our collection, Syria by the Sea,” said Pamela Marcil, public relations director for DIA.

The painting, which was authenticated by Dr. Gerald Carr, an authority on Church, was the top lot of the sale. The next-highest sale was the cover lot of Doyle’s catalog, a Chippendale mahogany side chair from Boston, which sold to the trade for $40,625 (est. $20,000/40,000). Two phone bidders went after the circa 1770 chair, which was originally part of a set of at least eight, said to have descended from the DeWolf family of Boston and Bristol, Rhode Island.

“This chair is from a group of one of the most important Boston side chairs, evidenced by where the others are,” stated Frank Levy of Bernard & S. Dean Levy in New York City. Two others are at the Winterthur Museum, one is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and two are at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design.

On January 22, 2006, another chair from the same set had sold for a record price at Sotheby’s for $464,000. The buyer was C.L. Prickett, American antiques dealers from Yardley, Pennsylvania.

In 1964 Ginsburg & Levy, Inc., New York City, had bought the chair that was in Doyle’s April 1 sale from Harry Arons, a Bridgeport, Connecticut, dealer, who claimed to have bought it from Estelle M. Godfrey, explained Frank Levy. Mrs. Godfrey’s name is inscribed on a pasted blue-bordered label on the front seat rail. The label was probably from the early 20th century, said David A.
Gallager, Doyle’s director of American furniture and decorative arts. A New Jersey collector consigned the chair to Doyle.

There were five Ammi Phillips (1788-1865) portraits in the sale, all from the collection of Robert E. Schmidt of New York, and all but one sold. A William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) portrait of Andrew Jackson Pierce, 1837, “a little gem,” according to Anne Cohen DePietro, Doyle’s director of American art, sold for $8750 (est. $5000/7000) to an absentee bidder.

The portraits were “average, perfectly solid examples,” stated folk art collector Michael Payne, of Carmel, New York. “Ammi Phillips was very prolific and the average collector has one.” For those who don’t, however, “you can walk into an auction house and for a few thousand dollars buy a wonderful example,” he added.

Competing with Doyle’s sale was Christie’s Interiors, a two-day sale with over 700 lots, where dealers and collectors bought items at very good prices, said Payne.

Paintings were 92% sold by lot, DePietro reported. “I’m very happy,” she said. “We’ve built it up nicely.” Doyle used to put its important paintings in a paintings sale, where 19th-century art would be shown with a Warhol, she explained. Over the last few years, American art has been offered in the same sale with American furniture and decorative arts. “There’s a diverse audience,” the art specialist added, “and an increasingly large number of individuals coming to us to buy.” There were several international subjects by American artists in the sale, she added.

Doyle’s salesroom was filled with two dozen bidders and browsers, some of whom spent their morning and early afternoon sitting and watching the sale, while others entered with a mission and left immediately after a certain lot had been bought. Most sales, however, were made on the phone and online.

Dealer Stanley Weiss of Providence, Rhode Island, bought eight lots of furniture by phone. “I went on a shopping spree,” said Weiss, who bought a cherry chest-on-chest, a pair of revival bedsteads, a mahogany dwarf clock, a 9' long double-pedestal dining table, and a New York tilt-top tea table, among other things.

James Kilvington of Dover, Delaware, previewed the sale. “I made a number of phone bids but didn’t get anything except for some Chinese export porcelain,” the dealer said in a phone interview after the sale. “Doyle has a lot of good retail clients, and the sale was well advertised and promoted,” he added.

Doyle’s next American paintings and furniture sale will be held in the fall. For more information, contact Doyle New York at (212) 427-2730 or via the website (www.doylenewyork.com).

Head of a Tewa Indian (Albert Lujan of the Taos Pueblo), created in 1931 by George Winslow Blodgett (1888-1958), was sold by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had acquired it in 1933 from Grand Central Art Galleries, New York City. The 10¼" high bronze with dark brown patina sold on the phone for $5313 (est. $700/900).

A set of eight (four shown) Gothic Revival mahogany side chairs, New York, second quarter 19th century, sold to an online bidder for $8125 (est. $2000/4000). The chairs were part of a collection that came from a Gothic Revival house on the Hudson.

Three phone bidders vied for this Classical mahogany and bird’s-eye maple dressing table with mirror, attributed to Thomas Seymour of Boston, 1812-17. David A. Gallager, director of American furniture and decorative arts at Doyle, said the attribution to Seymour was made after the estimates had been established. The 6'2" x 40" x 22" dressing table sold for $18,750 (est. $5000/7000). The drawer runners are in sections, Gallager pointed out before the sale.

This Federal-style inlaid mahogany dwarf clock, in the manner of Joshua Wilder, Hingham, Massachusetts, 47½" x 12" x 6½", sold on the phone to dealer Stanley Weiss of Providence, Rhode Island. He paid $21,250 for it (est. $2000/3000). A door plaque inside is inscribed “American Exchange National Bank from Mechanics National Bank of Providence, R.I.”

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