Auction Highlights
At Alderfer’s Dec. 6-8 Fine & Decorative Arts auction, 310 lots sold via LiveAuctioneers. Perhaps destined for some lucky lady’s Christmas stocking, a chic 18K gold bracelet containing 27.5 carats of princess-cut diamonds attracted 62 bids before settling at an above-estimate price of $10,200.
Items sold through LiveAuctioneers in Neal Auction’s Dec. 2-3 Holiday Estates sale included a C.C. Coventry (English, active by 1802, d. circa-1819) oil on canvas titled At the Stall of the Oyster Shucker. Coventry was a forerunner of the mid-19th-century painting styles of Biedermeier and the French Realists, and his appealing 48 inch by 60 inch artwork in Neal’s sale reached the top of its estimate range, making $9,187.50.
Treadway Gallery hosted another blockbuster sale of 20th-century art and design on Dec. 2, with 242 items purchased through LiveAuctioneers. A signed and numbered (32/100) Gustave Baumann woodblock measuring 11½ inches by 9½ inches and titled Church, Rancho de Taos, achieved an above-estimate price of $9,187.50.
In Leland Little’s Dec. 1 Historic Hillsborough auction, a simple but important circa-1780 Roanoke River Basin Chippendale sidechair referenced in John Bivins’ book The Furniture of Coastal North Carolina was entered with a $1,000-$2,000 estimate. It soared to an online selling price of $14,400.
Philadelphia’s newest fine art auction company, Fuller’s, got off to a fantastic start with its Dec. 1 inaugural sale. The top Internet lot was a 1981 Fernando Botero (Colombian, born 1932) patinated bronze titled Hand with Cigarette. The 33¾-inch tall sculpture was signed, numbered and stamped Botero 2/6 Fonderia/M/Italy, and offered with impeccable provenance. The amusing form sold above estimate for $132,000.
Stout’s Nov. 30-Dec. 1 Toy Train auction recorded 90,213 visitors to LiveAuctioneers’ online catalog. In the end, more than one-third of the sale’s offerings were purchased via the Internet, including an outstanding circa-1938 Lionel 700E prewar full-scale 5344 Hudson locomotive and tender, each with its original box. There were 577 visitors to this lot’s online listing alone, and it sold for $19,975 against an estimate of $2,000-$10,000.
