LAMBERTVILLE, N.J – On Saturday, Nov. 10, Rago Auctions will present works by notable New Hope School artists, locally consigned and never before offered for sale at auction. Absentee and Internet live bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers.
These fresh-to-market works come from some of Pennsylvania’s most celebrated Impressionists, including Walter Emerson Baum, Fern Isabel Kuns Coppedge, Nancy Maybin Ferguson, John Fulton Folinsbee, George W. Sotter and Robert Spencer.
The star of this segment of the American and European Fine Art Auction is a large, untitled winter night scene by George W. Sotter (above). It depicts the artist’s studio from above: an angle which he would never have seen but could only have imagined. This is a Sotter masterwork, a keen demonstration of the artist’s ability to make the darkness light, gilding a cold, blue winter night with the glow of the moon.
Another splendid landscape comes from Fern Isabel Kuns Coppedge, who settled in Lumberville, Bucks County, Pa., in 1920 and joined the Philadelphia Ten in 1922 after training at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women with Henry B. Snell. Among the most well-known of the Pennsylvania Impressionists, Coppedge employed bright, vibrant colors and sophisticated techniques, bridging Impressionism with Modernism. Her painting titled April – also crossing the auction block on Nov. 10 – is a fine example of her bold use of color in a springtime landscape.
The art colony of New Hope was a small community with a broad reach. The Pennsylvania Impressionists are also known for scenes painted during their travels to various New England locales, including the shorelines of Massachusetts and Maine. Examples in November’s sale include George W. Sotter’s painting Off Cape Ann and an untitled nautical scene of the Maine shoreline by John Fulton Folinsbee (below). Despite being stricken with polio and confined to a wheelchair, Folinsbee painted en plein air like many of his peers, depicting landscapes whose real-world subjects have remained largely unchanged to this day.
Additional Pennsylvania Impressionist works from this sale include The Delaware by Walter Emerson Baum, founder of the Baum School of Art and the Allentown Art Museum; an untitled scene of city hall (likely in Provincetown, Massachusetts) by Nancy Maybin Ferguson, also of the Philadelphia Ten; and Windy Day by Robert Spencer, an artist celebrated for his paintings of local mills and the working people of the Delaware River region.
Rago Auctions, based in the heart of the Lambertville/New Hope artist colony, is proud to support the secondary market for works by these prominent Pennsylvania Impressionists, works which have inspired decades of artists and created a greater appreciation for the landscapes of Buck County and the Delaware Valley.
Questions about the sale can be answered by calling 609-397-9374 or emailing Rago atinfo@ragoarts.com.
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