Farrin Pre-Thanksgiving Auction

Mark Sisco | November 18th, 2012

Two fish portraits by Maine artist Louis C. Ewer sold for $1265 apiece.

Two beaded pouches, apparently Plains Indian strike-a-light bags, both in good shape, fetched $1540 and $660.

Farrin’s Country Auctions, Randolph, Maine

Rusty Farrin held about 28 auctions in 2012. With the exception of an on-site auction or two, he holds two or three a month at his Randolph, Maine, facility, and he usually piles in some particularly good stuff for a pre-Thanksgiving auction, this time held on November 18, 2012. The sale was packed with a variety of folk art, country furniture, and artworks, most of which had room left in them for profitable resale.

Somebody got a great deal on an oil on canvas landscape by New Hampshire-born artist Alfred Cornelius Howland (1838-1909). Similar to many other Howland compositions, the painting showed a cabin in a grove of tall slender trees behind a quiet pond. His paintings often demonstrate Barbizon influence, and this one, with a brightly lit sky reflected in the pond, showed a bit of Luminism. Nevertheless, it sold for a mere $550 (with buyer’s premium).

Taxidermist J. Waldo Nash of Norway, Maine, was better known by his professional handle “Nash of Maine.” A 1914 article in the local Lewiston Journal reported that in his workshop “the air is tainted with the odor of fish mixed incongruously with that of paint and oils, brine and varnish.” In 1903 he was granted a patent for a process he called “Trout Mezzo,” a method of mounting a half body of a fish onto a convex plaque, giving it a realistic three-dimensional relief appearance. Here a half trout mounted on a background, apparently painted by Nash, drew $660.

Maine 19th- and 20th-century landscape artist and fish portraitist Louis C. Ewer is not widely known. Only a handful of his “fish oils” have come to the auction market in the past few years. This auction had two of them. Both are oils on board, about 18" x 24", dated 1890 and 1891, and signed lower left. They were among the top sellers, bringing $1265 each.

Vincent Hartgen (1914-2003) is credited with establishing the art department and museum at the University of Maine. In 36 years as the museum’s director, the museum acquired about 3900 pieces of original art. He also worked as a camouflage engineer during World War II. In 1947 he held his first solo exhibition at the George Binet Gallery, New York City. His best-known works are Modernist landscape watercolors. They rarely sell at auction for over $1000, yet some argue that he was one of Maine’s most influential artists of the 20th century. Here one of his Modernist watercolors brought $440.

For more information, call (207) 582-1455 or visit (www.farrinsauctions.com).

Alfred Cornelius Howland, oil on canvas, forest cabin on a quiet pond, $550.

These four classic Maine folk art spruce gum boxes, all in the form of books, brought prices ranging from less than $50 to $550. The small black one (second from left), missing the slide top, sold for the least amount. Left, the red and gold carved Bible with gilt edge “pages” brought $55. The two carved and inlaid boxes on the right, one with a poinsettia-like inlay, the other with inlaid hearts, fetched $550 apiece.

This ear-handled redware ovoid jar with manganese splotch decorations brought a strong $990.

Old country tavern table in the original dry red finish, with block-and-turned legs, through-tenon construction, a well-worn stretcher base, and a repair to the top, sold for $990.

Two classic Maine folk art crooked knives. At the bottom (and shown in detail in the center) is one with a bone shaft and and a hand that sold for $440. The scroll-handled knife with a raised heart (shown in detail, left), mother-of-pearl inlay, and carved initials “A H” sold for $330.

This tall Pennsylvania corner cupboard has wooden knobs, diamond bone or ivory lock escutcheons, and curious spinning side panels flanking the central drawer that led to an empty interior. It sold for $715.