Jan. 10, 2008

Including a selection of Pennsylvania Impressionists and Modernists. Featuring paintings, drawings and sculpture by Baum, Berge, Coppedge, Frishmuth, Garber, Herzog, Karasz, Liebermann, Meltzer, Noyes, Sorbi, Soyer and Waugh.

LAMBERTVILLE, New Jersey—On Saturday, Feb. 9, the Rago Arts and Auction Center will host a sale of paintings, drawings and sculpture by American and European artists, including a dedicated sale for serious collectors of the art of the Delaware River Valley. Absentee and live Internet bidding, as well as catalog preview, is available at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

The sale opens with the session devoted to Pennsylvania area artists. It includes the cover lot, an exceptionally rare, fine and large drawing by Daniel Garber, a mainstay of the Pennsylvania Impressionist group of painters and one of the most significant and decorated artists of his generation. Portrait of Elsa Laubach, ca. 1910, is a 21½ by 15¼ charcoal on paper (#D168 in the catalogue raisonné) that has remained with the Garber family since its execution. Estimated at $15,000-25,000, it will be sold in support of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA and its Centennial Campaign to fund critical capital improvements.

Also of note is Summer Reflections/Cooper River by Laurence A. Campbell. This dulcet scene of sailboats on a fine afternoon is from a private collection. It is estimated at $20,000-25,000. Fern Isabel Coppedge is represented by Bucks County Landscape, an oil on canvas, estimated at $15,000-20,000. An untitled landscape by Arthur Meltzer in a period Newcomb Macklin frame and Cedars in Winter (Sumneytown, PA) by Walter Baum, each shows the Bucks County landscape in winter and carries a pre-sale estimate of $8,000-12,000. The sale contains many other fine Pennsylvania pastorals, as well, by Bernard Badura, Charles Warren Eaton, Kenneth R. Nunamaker, Charles Hargens and Melville Stark. Collectors can choose among street scenes and cityscapes from Frederick R. Wagner, Antonio Pietro Martino and Ranulph Bye. There are seascapes by William Trost Richards and John Fulton Folinsbee - and a woman’s portrait by Folinsbee, as well, in a Bernard Badura frame.

Those in search of the Pennsylvania Modernists will find works by Lloyd Ney, Joseph Meierhans, Richard Harrison Crist and Elsie Driggs (whose work is currently the subject of an exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum). Rago’s introduced the sculpture of Raymond Barger to the secondary market with great success in September. Another of his works, Life, sculpted in 1973, has been consigned to February’s sale. A poem written by the artist is affixed to the wood base.

Rago’s continues its support of some of the finest artists working in and around Bucks County today. Artists Judy Henn, Glenn D. Harren, Alexander Farnham, William Jachwak, Collette Sexton, Jane Gilday, Bruce Braithwaite and Joseph Barrett have been newly joined by Jeff Gola, Illia Barger and Annelies Van Dommelen.

The second session of the auction features works by both American and European artists. Notable among these is a landscape by George Loftus Noyes; a recently discovered pastel on paper by Max Liebermann depicting trees in the artist’s garden on Lake Wannsee (authenticated and in the catalogue raisonné); seascapes by Frederick Judd Waugh, Howard Russell Butler and Hermann Herzog; two oils on canvas by Franklin Benjamn DeHaven (directly from the family of the artist); Rafaello Sorbi’s Giotto e Cimabue (recently accepted into the Sorbi Archives); View of Ischia by Nicola Simbari; an untitled canal scene by Lucien Frank; Birge Harrison’s Morning on the Hudson; portraits from Francois Gall and Moses Soyer; and a small and charming Modernist portrait of two dancers by the Russian theatrical designer and artist Serge Soudeikine.

Many will recall the fine bronzes sold last spring in Rago’s landmark auction of the Reingold Collection of American Sculpture. A number of fine bronzes have found their way to the auction house since. February’s sale features a crisp grouping and includes At the Water’s Edge by Edward Henry Berge and Harriet Whitney Frishmuth’s The Vine, both from a private collection.

More unexpected, but no less welcome, are two oils by renowned Nova Scotia folk artist Joe Norris and three gouache illustrations by Ilonka Karasz, two for The New Yorker and the third for Seventeen Magazine.

Also for sale in this session are works by Max Kuehne, Oscar Bluemner, Gustave Weigand, George Copeland Ault and Moses Soyer.

“I love the select scope of property we are offering in this sale,” says Meredith Hilferty, Director of Fine Arts at Rago’s, “Paintings, of course, but also fine bronzes and other sculpture, illustrations and a masterwork drawing in the Portrait of Elsa Laubach. You’ll see more such diversity in future sales.”

To preview the fully illustrated auction catalog, please visit www.LiveAuctioneers.com.