Sargent Takes Command

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, Thomaston, Maine

by Mark Sisco

A quarter-million dollars for a single painting can make an auctioneer's day. It can also divert attention from the unsold and passed lots. Such was the case at the November 7 and 8, 2009, auction at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Thomaston, Maine. Hundreds of misfires paled in the glow of the mega-hits. By our count, only about 550 of the nearly 1000 lots offered found new homes.

Many of the earliest of the European sculptures and artworks in the sale came from the estate of Anne Bigelow Stern of New York City. She was born into a musical family. Her father was an accomplished pianist and a well-known art collector, and her mother was a pioneer of electronic music. Around 1968, Stern began converting her home into a public museum to complement the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, New York, which had hosted a summer music festival since the mid-1940's. Her family had amassed an enormous collection of eastern and western art that focused on the Renaissance period.

A documented oil on panel by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the sale's big money earner. Sargent painted it as a young man. It showed a group of travelers in desert attire on the crest of a sand dune behind three saddled donkeys. On the opposite side was a painting of three Venetian boats. It was unsigned but had appeared as #788 in the 2006 catalogue raisonné John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1874-1882 by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray.

The theory is that Sargent painted the desert scene in Morocco, then reused the panel later, adding the Venetian scene on the back in 1880. The style of the sandolo and caorlina boats and the outlines of buildings on the waterfront suggest a canal scene. The 9¼" x 13" (sight size) work was the day's superstar, selling for $287,500 (includes buyer's premium).

Another six-figure hit came on an astonishingly early work loosely connected with Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553). Cranach is perhaps best known for his portrayals of his close friend and Protestant reformer Martin Luther and his family. Little is known of Cranach's early life beyond that he was born with the name Sunder and took his later surname from Kronach, the Bavarian village of his birth. His oldest extant work is Rest of the Virgin during the Flight into Egypt, done in 1504.

The work presented here was listed as possibly a portrait of "Princess Sybil of Saxony, in the manner of Lucas Cranach the Elder." For a painting of that age and condition, a subject identification and an ironclad attribution aren't necessary for it to hit the big time. The lovely woman, whoever she was, was shown with her hair rolled back tightly into a beaded net, wearing a black cap with a dominant white feather, a gold choker, and chains. Thought to have been done around 1535, the tempera painting on vellum was estimated at $25,000/ 50,000. Six phone bidders were still in play at $25,000, and a new one jumped in at $130,000, but when the hammer came down, the price was a commanding $189,750.

It's an unusual sale when an Andrew Wyeth watercolor can almost get lost among the other artworks. It wasn't Christina's World, but a 5" x 3 3/8" (sight size) framed Christmas card by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was of sufficient interest to bring $13,800. It was an original gouache of D'Artagnan drinking a toast with a photograph of Wyeth and his wife Betsy on the back, comically seated in the middle of a community landfill, and inscribed "We're in the dumps about the election but Merry Christmas anyway, the Wyeths," probably referring to the Kennedy presidential election in 1960.

For more information, call (207) 354-8141 or visit (www.thomastonauction.com).

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