WILLISTON, VT — Allan Rohan Crite (circa-1910-2007) was a gifted artist born to a middle-class family in New Jersey. He found work during the Great Depression as a Public Works Administration artist, and later would spend decades as a draftsman for naval ship design at Charleston Navy Yard.
Today, Crite is recognized as being in the vanguard of Black ethnocentrist artists, focusing his work largely on African Americans. He was quoted saying, “I’ve only done one piece of work in my whole life and I am still at it. I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans. I tell the story of man through the Black figure.”
Merrill’s Auctioneers brought a fine example of Crite’s work to market July 12 in its 20th Century Modern Design and Fine Art sale. Titled Late Afternoon and dated 1934, it appears to be a variant of a nearly identical painting in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The work was marked on the back PWA 1934 RICE SCHOOL, which Merrill’s presumed to mean the Public Works of Art exhibition in Boston that opened April 7, 1934 and hung at MIT’s Architectural Hall. Late Afternoon was also identified on a tag on the back with the numeral 1.
Estimated at $25,000-$45,000, Crite’s Late Afternoon hammered for $80,000 and sold for $100,800 with buyer’s premium.
CHICAGO — The top lot in the American Historical Ephemera and Photography Online sale held July 2 at Freeman’s Hindman was an album published in 1886 to mark the death of President Ulysses S. Grant. Estimated at $1,000-$1,500, it hammered for $4,750 and sold for $6,222 with buyer’s premium.
Produced by the US Instantaneous Photographic Co. of Boston in just 100 presentation copies, it includes 79 albumen prints of Grant, his family, his home, and images from his funeral. Most of the prints are titled in the negative, with an additional printed caption and descriptive text on the mount below. The black and brown morocco covers are titled in gilt-lettering One Hundred Books Presented for Exhibition by the Contributors to Perpetuate the Memory of Ulysses S. Grant.
STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET, UK — Agnete Hoy (1914-2000) brought her own distinctive style to the ailing Doulton Lambeth factory, reviving the traditional decorative methods of earlier artists to make contemporary stonewares from 1952 until the studio closed in 1957.
Hoy’s output, influenced by the Scandinavian ceramics she encountered when working in Copenhagen before the Second World War, was varied, but by far her best known and most desirable piece is the model of her own cat, Alexander Pushkin.
The 9in (23cm) cast decorated in various glazes was issued in 1955 in an edition of 12. For cat collectors, these are catnip. Only rarely do they appear at auction, but one led the Design sale at Sworders on July 9.
Glazed in tones of blue, black, and pale green and signed in the clay ‘Agnete Hoy’ and ‘Doulton Lambeth’, it was in good condition, save the firing cracks and bubbles that occurred in the kiln. Estimated at £4,500-£5,500 ($5,785-$7,070), it hammered for £10,000 ($12,855) and sold for £12,500 ($16,150) with buyer’s premium. Back in 2004, when Bonhams sold pieces from the Doulton Museum, another example glazed in tones of blue, black, and pale green hammered at around £6,000 ($7,715).
PARIS — While plastics and metals dominated much of mid-century design, Bonacina remained loyal to rattan. Continuing a tradition started by in the village of Lurago d’Erba in Brianza in 1889, the firm made its signature products using natural, sustainable materials, often designed by leading architects of the period. Gio Ponti, Franco Albini, Joe Colombo, and Giovanni Travasa all produced designs that are today regarded as Bonacina classics.
The Design sale at Piasa on July 10 was topped by two sets of rattan chairs made circa 1975 by Mario Bonacia (b.1947-) and Lorenzo ‘Renzo’ Mongiardino (1916-1999). Mongiardino provided a series of quick sketches with Bonacia, the third generation of his family to lead the firm, adapting the design to suit the materials.
The chairs offered at Piasa were the white lacquered 978 model, which has long been a favorite with interior designers. Dated to 1975, the sets of eight dining armchairs and eight side chairs were presented as two lots with individual estimates of €3,000-€4,000 ($3,250-$4,325), which hammered for €24,000 ($25,950) each and sold for €31,200 ($33,750) each with buyer’s premium. A third lot of three Bonacia and Mongiardino wicker and lacquered wickerwork armchairs, estimated at €1,200-€1,800 ($1,300-$1,950), hammered for €5,500 ($5,950), or €7,150 ($7,735) with buyer’s premium.
LOS ANGELES – Painted wood panels from a partial Louis XVI boiserie paneled bedroom were among the 250 lots at the Design for the Home and Garden auction at Andrew Jones on July 17. The French room décor, comprising more than 20 different elements decorated in parcel gilt and gray paint, were being sold by Los Angeles interior designer Craig Wright.
The provenance of this paneled bedroom is second-to-none. Commissioned circa 1780 for the Hotel Gaulin in Dijon, the home of the aristocratic Gonthier d’Auvillars family, it has changed hands on many occasions since it was removed from the house in the early 20th century.
Acquired by the financier John Pierpont Morgan in 1922, it was later owned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York (where it was on show from 1922 to 1953), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco before it was first auctioned in 1997.
In distressed overall condition, with areas of overpainted restoration and some later elements, it was offered with a conservative estimate of $3,000-$6,000 and sold at $19,000, or $24,700 with buyer’s premium.
