Rafael Osona welcomes Nantucket’s summer season with July 2 sale

NANTUCKET, Mass. – Rafael Osona Auctions will host its 42nd annual American Independence Holiday Auction on Saturday, July 2. Furnishings, fine art, antiques and decor from recently sold Nantucket estates together with compelling selections from Pawleys Island, Boston, Albany and Palm Springs lead the 625-lot sale, presenting both quality and range. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

Modern furniture design is represented by a collection of 14 lots of Stephen Swift’s bench-made cherry and mahogany furniture, including a scallop shell bed, a four-poster bed, a dining room table and chairs, bar stools and nightstands. A standout among more than a dozen Swift standouts is his mahogany five-drawer desk, estimated at $3,000-$5,000.

Among hundreds of fine art offerings, and from America’s early Abstract Modernist art movement, two paintings by De Hirsh Margules are offered, including Hadwen House, Nantucket, a 1931 watercolor estimated at $600-$800. Dubbed the Baron of Greenwich Village, Margules was intrinsic among New York City’s early 20th-century avant-garde artists, gallerists and thinkers.

The two watercolors offered explore an experiential sense of place at two stalwart Nantucket icons. Both were presumably painted on Nantucket, likely when Margules accompanied his patron, Alfred Stieglitz, to one of Frederick Howe’s locally infamous ‘Sconset salons.

American painter Robert Stark, Jr., has five works in the July 2 auction, including a painting featuring his signature red sail, estimated at $10,000-$12,000. Also featured is a stunning still life painting by American artist Janet Rickus, which carries an estimate of $4,000-$6,000. Rickus’s precisely placed and shadowed subjects seem somehow animated, as do the architecturally populated moors and dunescapes of Joan Albaugh; her undated oil on canvas On the Horizon is estimated at $4,000-$5,000.

The auction’s fine art offerings are packed with more than 100 works by Nantucket favorites James Cromartie, John Austin, Jan Munro, Illya Kagan, David Lazarus, Maggie Meredith, George Thomas, Donald Demers, Ken Layman, Irmgard Arvin and Joan Griswold.

A Civil War-era American patchwork quilt, estimated at $500-$700, leads a solid collection of quilts, textiles and contemporary and vintage Oriental rugs.

Fine jewelry choices include a 14K gold and diamond Nantucket basket pendant, estimated at $1,250-$1,500, plus South Sea, Akoya and other cultured pearls and fashionable necklaces.

Rounding out the highlights is a natural hide life-sized riding or pull toy in the form of a Palomino pony, complete with a hand-tooled leather saddle. This impressive plaything carries an estimate of $800-$1,200.

 

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