Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, 1823-1900), ‘Dawn of Morning, Lake George,’ sold for $660,000. Image courtesy of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. CHICAGO – Lesle Hindman Auctioneers auctioned the personal collection of Cleveland rheumatologist Dr. Paul J. Vignos Jr. to a packed room of bidders and thousands of others on the telephones and Internet. The Nov. 6-8 auction included American and European paintings and prints, English, French and American 18th- and 19th-century furniture, European and American silver, porcelain and glass, antiquities, sporting decoys and fishing equipment.
Competitive bidding resulted in a successful sale total of $3,018,378 and set numerous auction records. John Bunyan Bristol, Gate, St. Augustine, Florida, sold for $73,200, becoming the highest price ever paid for a work by Bristol. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Dawn of Morning, Lake George, sold for $660,000, setting an auction record as the fourth-highest price ever paid for a work by the artist.
Other highlights included William Trost Richards, Rocky Coast, sold for $170,800, more than doubling its estimate of $60,000/80,000. A Greek pottery skyphos, sold for $41,480 and a gilt and patinated bronze figural mantel clock sold for $34,160.
“Dr. and Mrs. Vignos were consummate collectors,” said Leslie Hindman, president and CEO. “We are thrilled to have handled their extensive collection in a single-owner auction. The collection is reflective of their style: thoughtful, elegant and magnanimous.”
John Bunyan Bristol (1926-1909), ‘Gate, St. Augustine, Florida,’ sold for $73,200, becoming the highest price ever paid for a work by the New York artist. Image courtesy of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.
William Trost Richards (American, 1833-1905), ‘Rocky Coast’ sold for $170,800, more than double its estimate. Image courtesy of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.
BRUSSELS (AFP) – Belgium on Wednesday demanded the return of an oil painting by Flemish master Pierre Paul Rubens nabbed more than 200 years ago during the French Revolution and currently in the hands of a French museum.
French-speaking parliamentarians adopted a resolution urging their government “to undertake all useful steps to negotiate with France the restitution to the Tournai cathedral of Rubens’ work The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus.”
The oil on canvas was created in 1635 for the bishop of Tournai, a town in western Belgium, and paid for with funds raised by local residents.
Along with another Rubens work it was seized and sent to France in 1794 by French troops occupying what is now Belgium.
Napoleon Bonaparte sent it to the western city of Nantes in 1801 and it is still held by the municipal museum there.
VIENNA (AFP) – Thieves made away with a second rhinoceros horn in Vienna, police announced Wednesday, after a first one was snatched at an auction house in the capital earlier this week.
The two horns were among five to be put up for sale by the Dorotheum auction house on Monday.
Before the sale however, two men asked to see two pieces and then, in front of the Dorotheum staff, snatched them and ran away.
A staff member managed to seize one of the horns again, but the thieves got away with the other one.
The retrieved piece was eventually sold in the afternoon auction for 85,700 euros ($116,500).
The next day, another of the horns that was auctioned off was then stolen from its new owner, a taxidermist.
Two men, only described as speaking English, visited the man’s shop and made off with the horn when the owner left them alone to take a phone call, police said in a statement Wednesday.
The taxidermist had acquired the 15-inch horn for 24,700 euros ($33,515) at the Dorotheum sale.
While both thefts were similar in many ways, “these were unquestionably different people,” a police spokeswoman insisted Wednesday.
The Dorotheum house meanwhile announced: “We will no longer accept and auction off rhinoceros horns.”
The theft of rhino horns has surged across Europe, with around 20 cases reported this year alone, including in France, Belgium, Britain and Portugal, in what investigators believe is the work of an international gang.
Rhino poaching has been on the rise due to a high demand for the animals’ horns in Asian medicinal treatments, especially in Vietnam where it is believed to cure cancer.
Booming demand has driven the price to half a million dollars per horn, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
One square depicts the original church, the Rev. Goodwyn’s name and the date 1867. Image courtesy of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration.
NEW IBERIA, La. (AP) – The 144-year-old quilt, embroidered and appliqued in 1867, was the only piece of church history left after the first First United Methodist Church burned down more than a century ago. The church was long since rebuilt, but the congregation didn’t even know the quilt still existed until 2004.
Restored in New Orleans, it was almost ready to return as October ended, fabric restorer Jessica Hack said.
The 8-by-9-foot quilt, which found its way back to the church after unknown years in attics and closets, depicts more than just the talent and artistic creativity of the quilters in the late 1860s. It tells a tale of its own, reminding members of the city’s first Methodist church services held in 1823, an organized Methodist church and Sunday school established in 1839 and the Methodists’ first permanent New Iberia church, established in 1860.
“We knew immediately we had to start raising funds to preserve part of our historic past,” said Norma Lester, a member of the of the Women’s Ministry of First United Methodist Church.
Members of The Helping Hand Link, part of the women’s ministry, knew if they were to preserve such an important part of their church’s history, they had to do it immediately. With that in mind, the restoration and preservation of a silk quilt handcrafted by the women of the congregation in 1867 quickly became their top priority.
The cost of $11,700 for restoration and preservation—and another $4,000 to be able to display it—is well worth it for such a historic piece, members say. They view the project as a way to preserve the history of not only the church, but also the community in fabric.
Each of the 49 squares is worked in colorful appliqué and embroidered with different patterns, including each quilter’s family surname. Some of these surnames represent ancestors of not only present members, but also their friends and family. Pharr, Riggs, Reynolds, Dorsey, Blanchet, Stein, Steen, French and many other names of current New Iberia residents are embroidered on the quilt. One of the squares includes the name of the Rev. A.E. Goodwyn, pastor of the church from 1868-1873.
Just as colorful as the quilt is its history and the church it represents.
According to members of the congregation, their first permanent church in New Iberia, First Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was located on the corner of Iberia and Washington streets.
“The Methodist Conference Report described it as the grandest and most beautiful structure in South Louisiana. It was constructed of timber, ‘felled and hewn by members’ own hands,” said Lester.
The church was dedicated in 1860 and the 23rd session of the Louisiana Annual Conference met at the church in 1868.
In 1890, Lester said, the church, the parsonage and all contents burned. But, somehow, the silk quilt completed in 1867 survived.
Inita Segura, a member of the ministry, said the quilt was stored in a pillowcase for decades. As the member keeping it died, it was handed down to another church member until it finally reached the hands of the late Amelia Laughlin, a local principal, and then to Jessie Lee Lusk de la Houssaye. After she died, her daughter, Jessie D. Abadie, with approval from her family, offered it back to the church in 2004.
“We did not know the quilt even existed until the family came forward. It is extremely important to us to restore this quilt. After the fire of the church, this was the only piece of history left,” said Segura. “It is up to us to preserve it. We feel responsible for it.”
May Kneupper, a member of the ministry and a retired certified quilt instructor, described the church’s treasured possession as one of pure beauty.
“It is the most beautiful quilt I have ever seen. The handwork is amazing with a combination of patch work, embroidery, appliqué and embroidered writing in Old English,” she said.
Kneupper said one square in the center of the quilt reads “Mary A. Riggs, by her friends.”
“It seems the quilt was made and dedicated to her as a memorial, but we are not sure,” she said.
Church members are still looking for family history to connect to other names on the quilt such as Elps, A. Moon, T. Roane, Norwood, W. Williams and others.
While the answers to many of the questions will never be known, members of the women’s ministry say they are honored to have been presented with this special quilt.
Their fundraisers for its restoration included raffling a hand-tied quilt made of vintage fabric.
The historic quilt was turned over to Jessica Hack, a textile conservator in New Orleans, to stabilize and preserve its original beauty. As October ended, she said the work was about three weeks ahead of schedule.
Hack, known for her restoration work in antique textiles ranging from the 17th to the 20th century, described the heirloom as one of rare quality.
“You seldom see this much uniqueness of design and beauty in a quilt. Judging by the detail of their work, these were skilled needlewomen, not amateurs,” said Hack. “In addition to the excellent embroidery work, the quilting stitches are subtle, sewn with elaborate designs.”
Some squares on the quilt feature images of a lion, cheetah, polar bear, flowers, trees, a picture of the Methodist Church building, arbor and a purple and white striped tiger. Each quilter embroidered her family name on her square.
“It is just beautifully rendered. The textural work, appliqué and padded embroidery and the variety of designs are amazing. It is artistically, as well as historically of great value to the church,” said Hack.
Hack said the quilt was restored in two different phases. In the first phase, crepeline silk fabric was used to overlay and stabilize the shattering silk fabric. The fabric was dyed and coated with a heat sealing adhesive and fitted to each of the 49 squares. Once that labor-intensive project was completed, the quilt would be stored in an acid-free box.
Church members are hoping to raise an additional $4,050 for the second phase, allowing the quilt to be permanently displayed upright, on a stretcher mount.
“This is a determined group of ladies who have worked hard to make sure this silk heirloom would not just sit in a closet and rot away. This is an heirloom that is worth preserving,” said Hack.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
The New Iberia (La.) First United Methodist Church silk quilt upon restoration. Image courtesy of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration.M.P. Young is represented by a basket of fruit. Image courtesy of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration.Songbirds and a white bear are pictured on one of the quilt squares. Image courtesy of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration.Jessica Hack (left), owner of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration, and associate conservator Nicole Blais, who did a lot of the actual treatment on the quilt. Image courtesy of Jessica Hack Textile Restoration.
USS Enterprise at the New York Navy Yard, circa spring 1890. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
NEW YORK (AP) – The story of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and its vital role in American history as a major military shipbuilding site spans more than 200 years. But it’s also the story of the adaptive reuse of a historic site as a bustling industrial park that today employs thousands of people in such diverse fields as film production and green energy manufacturing.
The two stories of the navy yard—decommissioned by the government in 1966—are the themes of a new museum opening Friday, Veterans Day, on the sprawling grounds of the 300-acre campus located in an East River inlet across Lower Manhattan.
The design of the $25.6 million Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92 also reflects those stories. The museum is housed in the restored 1857 house of the former Marine commandant and is connected to a modern three-story visitors center featuring a solar screen with an image of the USS Brooklyn leaving the yard in 1936.
A 22,500-pound anchor from the USS Austin—one of the last ships built on the site—and a wind-solar street lamp are the first yard-manufactured artifacts visitors will see upon entering the glass atrium lobby.
“These will show the public right there what the exhibit in the building is all about: The past, the present and the future,” Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., which manages the yard for the city.
“For the first time, the public is going to be able to come in behind our gates and learn about the extraordinarily rich history of the yard and also about how we’ve become a national model for sustainable urban industrial parks,” Kimball said.
The exhibition is drawn from more than 41,000 blueprints, historic photos, drawings, maps and yard artifacts and fills six galleries on three floors of the historic building that was designed by Thomas U. Walter, an architect of the U.S. Capitol.
“You are going to see the whole history of the United States projected through a very specific lens of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said museum archivist Daniella Romano.
New York City purchased the yard in 1967 but attempts to revitalize it failed until 2000, when the city began to invest in stabilizing its infrastructure.
It’s the first time the story of the yard has been told in a comprehensive way, Romano said.
At Building 92, the story unfolds with a timeline and a 40-foot-long wall mural of the different classes of ships built or launched at the yard—sailing frigates, Civil War ironclads, gunboats, 20th-century warship and submarines. They included such storied ships as the Fulton II, the first U.S. steam warship assigned to sea duty; the USS Maine, which exploded in Havana Harbor and precipitated the Spanish-America War; the USS Arizona, which went down in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor; and the USS Missouri on which the treaty ending World War II was signed.
A mangled steel pipe from the USS Arizona and a detailed model of the USS Ohio, which intercepted slave ships off the coast of Africa in the 1800s, are among the objects on display. An interactive table map allows multiple users to navigate the evolution of the yard through geography and time. And ambient sounds of pistons, steam engines and hammering recreate the atmosphere of the yard’s bygone era.
But the yard wasn’t just about shipbuilding. Visitors learn that the first singing voice was broadcast wirelessly in 1907 aboard the USS Dolphin docked in the yard. Commodore Matthew C. Perry established the Naval Lyceum there, a precursor to the U.S. Naval Academy; and E.R. Squibb, a Navy surgeon who founded Myers Squibb, introduced anesthetic ether at the yard’s sprawling U.S. Naval Hospital, where soldiers from the 1860s through World War II were treated.
Oral histories tell other stories. Robert Hammond, one of 10 African-American nurses at the naval hospital in the 1940s, talks about initially being relegated to kitchen duty and two “Rosie the Riveter” welders speak about their fight to get the same $1.14 hourly wage their male counterparts got.
In “Today’s Yard” gallery, portraits, videos and products tell the story of the yard’s 6,000 workers and 275 businesses. Visitors learn, for example, that Steiner Studios—the largest film and television complex outside Hollywood—is the yard’s largest tenant.
Visitors also can take a guided bike or bus tour of the vast campus, driving past a pre-Civil War dry dock, a gargantuan 1899 machinist’s warehouse slated to become a green manufacturing center, and the naval hospital that stands frozen in time.
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Online: www.brooklynnavyyard.org
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Ai Weiwei in a June 2007 photo by Benutzer. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license.
BEIJING (AP) – Thousands of people have sent more than $800,000 to Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, some tossing cash folded into airplanes over his gate, to help him pay a tax bill they see as government harassment, he said Monday.
A state-run newspaper criticized the outpouring and warned it could be illegal.
The donation campaign—also in the form of wire transfers and cash stuffed in envelopes or wrapped around fruit that is thrown into his yard—is rare for Chinese dissidents because of the threat of retaliation that comes with supporting high-profile government critics.
Nearly 20,000 people have sent more than 5.3 million yuan ($840,000) since he announced a week ago that the Beijing tax bureau was demanding that he pay 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in back taxes and fines, Ai said.
“This shows that a group of people who want to express their views are using their money to cast their votes,” Ai told The Associated Press. “It shows that in the Internet age, society will have its own judgment and its own values. People are using these methods to re-examine the accusation that I evaded taxes.”
Ai, an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist, was detained for nearly three months earlier this year amid an overall crackdown on dissent, setting off concern well beyond the arts circles and civil rights community in which he is well known. The detention and subsequent claims of tax evasion have been interpreted by activists as a way to punish him for his often-outspoken criticism of the authoritarian government.
Ai said that he would not treat the money from supporters as donations, but as loans that he would repay.
On Monday, staff and volunteers at Ai’s Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd. design company were sorting through hundreds of wire transfer receipts and sending off packets of sunflower seeds in return, a reference to Ai’s past installation involving 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds at London’s Tate Modern. Some donated bank notes were rolled into balls and others were folded into paper airplanes.
Volunteer Liu Yanping said many of the donations have been accompanied by messages of support, including “Brother, let me be your creditor,” and “The whole family has been mobilized, everyone will be creditors,” Liu said. Other messages were poetic: “Walk toward the light, the darkness will pass,” wrote one supporter.
One person, feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming, described her donation as “a form of support as well as an appeal.” She declined to reveal the size of her contribution.
“Everyone can clearly see how the whole process of accusing Ai Weiwei of tax evasion has not been transparent or fair,” said Ai, who is based in the southern city of Guangzhou.
Ai the artist has demanded that police return the account books they seized from his studio when they detained him and that they allow him to meet with his former office manager and accountant.
Calls to the local tax bureau rang unanswered. In a commentary Monday, the state-run Global Times cited unnamed experts as saying Ai could be suspected of “illegal fundraising.” It also said the movement did not represent the larger Chinese population.
“It is absolutely normal for a certain number of people to show their support for him with donations. But these people are an extremely small number when compared with China’s total population,” the commentary said. “Ai’s political preference along with his supporters’ cannot stand for the mainstream public, which is opposed to radical and confrontational political stances.”
The newspaper also asked if Ai really needed to borrow money to pay off the tax bill. Ai has shown his work in London, New York and Berlin and has earned large sums selling his work at auctions and through galleries.
“Yes, I am very wealthy, but this is a separate issue,” Ai said of the newspaper’s criticism. “I have said that I will repay every cent of the loans. One person’s innocence is tied together to a country’s innocence. I’m not doing this to profit myself.”
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Gillian Wong can be reached at http://twitter.com/gillianwong
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The former Lehman Brothers New York City headquarters. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
BERLIN (AP) – The worthless but historic first share issued by collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers has sold at an auction in Germany for 24,000 euros ($33,000).
Auctioneer Michael Schmitt said Monday that the share, issued by the bank when it went public in 1994, used to hang in the office of Lehman Brothers’ then chief executive Richard Fuld, for whom it was issued.
The buyer, who wanted to remain anonymous, purchased the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. share for its historic value, Schmitt said. “This is the ultimate document of the financial crisis,” he added.
The bidding for the green and white document, series No. LB 0001 and measuring about 12 inches by 9 inches, started at 5,000 euros at Historisches Wertpapierhaus’ premises in southern German Wuerzburg on Saturday, he said.
Lehman collapsed in 2008 in what is widely seen as a key trigger of the financial crisis.
The share was auctioned off this spring alongside a trove of other objects such as furniture or art exhibits from the defunct bank’s offices, and a European dealer found the share in the lot and recognized its value, Schmitt said.
The dealer then offered it to Schmitt because he specializes in ancient stock market documents.
“German collectors make up 50 to 60 percent of the world market for historic shares,” Schmitt said.
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Architect Moshe Safdie designed the museum complex. Image courtesy of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) – As an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Walton had the means to buy almost any piece of art on the market. So she scooped up one masterpiece after another: an iconic portrait of George Washington, romantic landscapes from the 19th century, a Norman Rockwell
She amassed an enviable collection of treasures spanning most of American history, and now it’s about to go on display in an unlikely place, a wooded ravine in a small city in northwest Arkansas.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is regarded as the nation’s most important new art museum in a generation, offering the type of exhibits more commonly found in New York or Los Angeles. But this hall of paintings is taking shape in Bentonville, a community of 35,000 people best known as the home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. headquarters.
Walton’s collection provided a “sort of instant museum,” said Henry Adams, an art history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Rather than starting with a small collection and slowly expanding, Crystal Bridges will be fully formed from day one.
“You usually don’t have a museum that appears out of nowhere,” said Adams, who ranked the new place “somewhere between the top and the middle” of American museums.
The inaugural exhibition, titled “Celebrating the American Spirit,” will take visitors on a tour of important moments in the nation’s development.
Visitors first encounter portraits of Revolutionary War figures in the Colonial-era gallery, then move on to renderings of early settlers and American Indians, followed by paintings from the Civil War period. Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter from World War II is also there, as are paintings that reflect the civil rights era.
The galleries themselves blend natural and artificial light, a key element of architect Moshe Safdie’s design. Glass-enclosed corridors run between buildings, providing wide views of the grounds, including a stream fed by three springs. One of the springs, Crystal Spring, gives the museum its name.
When the museum opens Nov. 11, many of the paintings will be on public display for the first time because Walton bought them from private collections.
In the case of public art, Walton’s acquisition efforts have drawn howls from some art lovers and critics on the East Coast, who bemoaned the notion that cherished works were being commandeered for display in an Ozark mountain town.
But experts say that story has been told before.
“Think of how the owners of the great collections in Europe and England must have felt at the beginning of the 20th century, when a lot of their art was coming into this country,” said David M. Sokol, art history professor emeritus of the University of Chicago.
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The Arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna, Libya, which was a prominent city of the Roman Empire. Photo by David Gunn. ROME (AP) – Libya’s famed ancient Roman sites, including the sprawling seaside ruins of Leptis Magna, were spared damage by NATO during the recent airstrikes, says a London-based Libyan archaeologist .
Hafed Walda, a research fellow at Kings College, said Friday that he wanted to “say thank you to NATO for achieving precision strikes” during its campaign to protect civilians from late dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime
Libya boasts many ancient Roman structures, along with a wealth of ancient artifacts in its major museum in the capital Tripoli and in other museums countrywide.
During the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq’s major museum in Baghdad was looted. Fears were raised on the outbreak of violence in Libya that a similar fate may befall its antiquities and ancient ruins.
Walda, speaking at the American Academy in Rome at a conference on saving cultural heritage in crisis areas, said he had visited sites in the country’s west in late September, and all had “so far seen no visible loss.”
He warned, however, that “only time will tell” if any damage surfaces.
NATO launched a bombing campaign over Libya in March and carried out more than 9,300 airstrikes. The campaign ended in October after Gadhafi’s death.
Among the sites Walda declared unscathed by the bombing—or in the fighting between Gadhafi’s forces and rebels—were the port city of Leptis Magna, around 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the capital Tripoli and one of the best preserved cities of ancient Roman glories. It was originally founded by seafaring Phoenicians from Carthage as a trading post in the first millennium B.C.
Walda also inspected Rasaimergib Fort, near Leptis, where he said NATO took out several radars but an ancient arch at the site “didn’t move at all,” and Sabratha—another renowned ancient city—which also showed no damage.
Walda suggested that confusion in the country in the first weeks of the revolt may have contributed to the reappearance at an April auction of a first-century marble bust depicting a Roman princess, which had disappeared from view after being looted from the Sabratha ruins a decade ago.
The head of Italy’s Carabinieri paramilitary police art squad, Gen. Pasquale Muggeo, said police are now investigating the whereabouts of the statue all those years. It was sold at the Christie’s auction for 120,000 euro ($168,000), “but its value really can’t be estimated” because of its ancient provenance, he told The Associated Press.
Muggeo said police seized the statue after they were tipped off that it had been sold to a buyer who purchased it in good faith.
Although the North African nation’s Roman sites appeared to have survived unscathed, Walda confirmed reports that 6,600 bronze, silver and gold ancient coins stolen from a Benghazi bank vault earlier in the revolt were still missing. Benghazi, eastern Libya’s biggest city, served as a base for rebel leaders.
“It appeared to be an inside job,” he said, adding that the thieves had apparently drilled into the vault.
He said that hundreds of the coins were recovered from a man caught crossing into Egypt.
Walda—who has been based in London for decades but made periodic research trips to Libya during Gadhafi’s regime—said he will visit eastern Libya this week to continue his inspections, adding that he has yet to visit Libya’s vast interior.
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Click here to view the fully illustrated catalog for this sale, complete with prices realized.
