The Ralph Esmerian Sale

January 25th, 2014

Sotheby’s, New York City

Photos courtesy Sotheby’s

Ralph Esmerian spent 30 years seeking the best American folk art. As the driving force and chairman of the board of trustees of the American Folk Art Museum, he promised his collection to the museum. In 2001, on the occasion of moving into its new building on East 53rd Street in Manhattan, the museum published American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum,a large catalog of the collection with entries written by scholars in the field, and installed the collection. There were rave reviews.

Ten years later Esmerian, a leading dealer in colored gemstones, had overextended his business to include jewelry stores and pledged his collections as collateral to multiple creditors. He was sentenced to six years in federal prison for fraud for concealing assets from the bankruptcy court and for wire fraud.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruled that the Esmerian collection had to be sold to satisfy creditors. The Museum of American Folk Art was allowed to choose 53 items to keep for the museum (valued at $7.8 to $11 million), and 228 items were ordered to be sold to satisfy creditors. Sotheby’s and Christie’s were among the creditors; Sotheby’s was selected as the venue.

The auction was held on Saturday morning, January 25, during Americana Week, when collectors are in New York City for sales and shows. The salesroom was packed. There were reserved seats for 400 bidders and market watchers, most of them clutching catalogs titled Visual Grace: Important American Folk Art from the Collection of Ralph O. Esmerian. It took four hours to sell it all, with bidders on the phone, on the Internet, and in the salesroom all competing.

It was a bittersweet sale. Just as the stunning preview exhibition opened at Sotheby’s, the Museum of Modern Art, which acquired the American Folk Art Museum building when the board of trustees could not meet its loan payment, announced it will certainly demolish it to make room for MoMA expansion.

Billionaires, multimillionaires, and dealers representing them signed up for paddles, which they waved in the air, competing with absentee bidders for the works they never thought they would have a chance to own. They spent $12,955,943 (including buyers’ premiums), well over the presale estimates (figured without the buyers’ premiums). The hammer total of about $10.5 million was well over the $7 million privately offered for the whole collection before the sale. The $7 million offer was said to be from dealers David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles of Woodbury, Connecticut, but Schorsch and Smiles would neither confirm nor deny that offer.

Schorsch bid from a skybox by phone to Nancy Druckman, Sotheby’s head of folk art. He said he was representing 11 clients and purchased 37 lots for six of them. He spent almost $4 million, about $1 million of it for stock.

Schorsch said that 32 items in the sale had been bought by Esmerian from his mother, Marjorie Schorsch (1930-2007), or from him in the years 1978 to 1995 for a total of $946,000 and that they sold for a total of $3,258,813, a tidy profit of $2.3 million. “Esmerian reached for the best, and the best holds value and increases over time,” said Schorsch in an interview after the sale.

Sotheby’s reported the sale as a record total for any sale of American folk art, topping the $12,299,528 for the two-part Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little sale of 1072 lots held in four sessions in January and October 1994, when the buyer’s premium was 15% on any amount up to $50,000 and 10% on the rest. (The hammer total for that Little sale was higher at $10.9 million.) The Littles’ collection was put together by scholarly antiquarians; Esmerian bought the art in folk art. It was a record for any single-session single-catalog folk art sale.

Some staggering prices were paid, and there were some good buys. It was an erratic sale, and not every lot sold. Of the 228 lots offered, 188 found buyers, which is 82.5% sold by lot. According to Sotheby’s, the sale was 93.7% sold by value, which shows that a few lots with too high estimates failed to sell. According to Bloomberg News, liquidation trustee Jay Teitelbaum said, “Even with this very good result, creditors still will be looking at recovery of less than ten cents on the dollar.” Teitelbaum must figure out how to best sell the 40 bought-in lots, valued at around $990,000.

There were plenty of record prices. The figure of Santa Claus that New York carver Samuel Robb carved for his daughter Elizabeth in 1923 sold for $875,000 (includes buyer’s premium), well over its estimate and a record for carving by a carver of trade figures. The buyers, David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles, said they did not buy it for Jane Katcher, their major client, who watched the sale with them from the skybox. The underbidder was dealer Leigh Keno, bidding for his clients Marjorie and John McGraw, who were sitting with him.

There was keen competition for the portrait of Jeremiah H. Emerson by Ruth Whittier Shute and Samuel
Addison Shute. It went to a Pennsylvania collector in the salesroom for an auction record for the artists at $665,000 (est. $150,000/200,000), underbid by dealer David Wheatcroft of Westborough, Massachusetts, a major buyer at the sale.

On behalf of a client, dealer Peter Sawyer of Exeter, New Hampshire, paid $521,000 (est. $100,000/150,000) for the three watercolor and pencil portraits of the Carver family (Barnabas Bartol Carver, Mary Coffin Carver, and their small daughter Frances Ann Carver) painted in Freeport, Maine, circa 1835. Wheatcroft was the underbidder.

On behalf of collectors, dealer Deanne Levison of Atlanta outbid Schorsch and Smiles to buy a carved pine pheasant hen weathervane for $449,000 (est. $200,000/300,000).

The work of Jacob Maentel, an itinerant painter who recorded the prosperous farmers and tradesmen in Pennsylvania and Indiana using watercolor and gouache on paper, was enthusiastically embraced. Maentel’s portraits of John Bickel and Caterina Bickel in their parlor decorated with bright blue wallpaper sold for $401,000 (est. $200,000/300,000) to Schorsch and Smiles, underbid by David Wheatcroft. Maentel’s portrait of the hatter John Mays of Schaefferstown went to David Wheatcroft for a client and seemed like a bargain at $245,000 (est. $60,000/80,000). Wheatcroft had bought it for Ralph Esmerian at a sale at Pook & Pook in May 2006 for $469,000. David Schorsch was the underbidder at both sales.

Less colorful but charming Maentel portraits of Elizabeth Haak and Michael Haak sold for $233,000 (est. $80,000/120,000) to collectors on the phone. The same collectors paid $389,000 for a pair of portraits, possibly of Captain and Mrs. Fitzhugh Greene, attributed to John Durand, 1768-70, paying less than their aggressive estimates of $400,000/600,000.

Schorsch and Smiles bought the Shutes’ portrait of Mary Ann Russell for $317,000 (est. $30,000/50,000), underbid by David Wheatcroft. Wheatcroft and Schorsch were both bidding on a box painted with a polychrome checkerboard, made in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and misattributed in the catalog to Schoharie County, New York; both think they were the underbidder. It sold to a Pennsylvania collector in the salesroom for $377,000 (est. $50,000/75,000). The same buyer paid a record $341,000 (est. $80,000/120,000) for the Wilhelm Schimmel carved and painted pine lion that had sold at Sotheby’s Wetzel sale near Reading in 1980 for the then-record $44,000.

New York City collector Jerry Lauren, who buys the best of the works by Bill Traylor, paid a record $365,000 (est. $125,000/175,000) for Bill Traylor’s blue and black Man with a Plow, for which Ralph Esmerian had paid a record $178,500 at the first sale of Traylor drawings at Sotheby’s in December 1997.

What will be the impact on the market of these big prices paid by a handful of wealthy collectors as passionate about folk art as Ralph Esmerian and who are willing to pay what it takes to own it?

“It should give the market a lift,” said David Wheatcroft, adding, “The updraft will only last if the economy improves.”

Will the fact that so many lots whizzed by high estimates restore some confidence in the market? David Schorsch said the impact had already been felt at the New York Winter Antiques Show, where sales were brisk on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday after the sale. “It has ushered in a new era,” he said.

Many wonder if ever again another collection of this quality will come to a salesroom. Great works are out there, but some of them will go to museums. Druckman, who often had bid for Ralph Esmerian, said she was happy to see people so excited about the objects and anxious to share their enthusiasm. “It was a great gathering of the clan,” she said. “It was the sale that defines this field of American folk art.”

It was without a doubt a landmark sale. The pictures and captions tell more of the story. There are no images of redware figures or animals; half a dozen did not sell because of high estimates for works with repairs. The Mahantongo desk was found to have surface problems and failed to get a bid. Records include a painted Mahantongo spice cup for $245,000 (est. $80,000/120,000) to dealers C.L. Prickett of Yardley, Pennsylvania; a Shaker rug for $161,000 (est. $8000/12,000) to Schorsch and Smiles; a painted yarn reel, $31,250 (est. $6000/8000) to a phone bidder (it had brought a record $16,500 at Sotheby’s in January 1987); and $28,125 (est. $8000/12,000) for a sugar bucket signed by Joseph Lehn. Lehn sugar buckets sell regularly at auctions in Pennsylvania for $3000 to $5000. This one was in fine condition and had a paper label with “Joseph Lehn in his 91 year, Dec 16, 1888”—an example of the best and the rest.

The Santa carved by Robb ($875,000) was a record for a trade figure; the portrait of Jeremiah Emerson ($665,000), a record for a Shute watercolor. The triple portrait by the so-called Carver Limner ($521,000) was a record for the artist. The portrait of three children in a landscape by Henry Walton ($245,000) is a record for the artist. Man with a Plow made a record for a Bill Traylor, and the lion made a record for a carving by Wilhelm Schimmel. The box by George Robert Lawton (1813-1885) at $209,000 (est. $30,000/40,000) is a Lawton record. There may be other record prices.

Todd Prickett bought several lots of Pennsylvania redware, among them one slipware and two sgraffito plates and a slipware jar, knowing it will be hard to find better examples. Patrick Bell of Olde Hope Antiques bought multiple lots, including several frakturs. Wheatcroft, Sawyer, and Schorsch were major buyers along with a private collector in the salesroom and two private collectors bidding by phone.

The American Folk Art Museum bought three lots. One was a redware plate with a silhouette of a running horse for $34,375 (est. $30,000/40,000), for which Esmerian paid $8250 in February 1978. Another was a manuscript book with 40 decorated pages for $53,125 (est. $25,000/35,000). The third lot consisted of a miniature slipware plate together with a potter’s slip-trailing cup for $8750. The small slipware plate was the first piece of American folk art that Ralph Esmerian bought for himself in 1966, when he went to buy a coverlet as a gift for his friend June Ewing. In American Radiance he wrote in the introduction about how he slipped the small plate into his pocket as he left John Gordon’s gallery with the bulky birthday present in his arms. Esmerian had bought the unidentified potter’s slip-trailing cup in May 1995 at Sotheby’s sale of the Deyerle collection for $1610.

Some wondered if Ralph Esmerian was able to watch the sale on a computer from U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. Bloomberg News reports that he is scheduled to be released on November 29, 2016, according to the Web site of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

For more information about the sale, contact Sotheby’s at (212) 606-7000 or (www.sothebys.com).

Originally published in the March 2014 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2014 Maine Antique Digest