BEACHWOOD, OH – Like many Russian academic painters, Ivan Fedorovich Choultse (1874-1939) experienced great uncertainty during the revolutionary years and, following a lengthy trip to Europe from 1917 to 1919, chose to emigrate to France in 1921. During the late 1920s and early 1930s he held several well-received exhibitions in New York that helped his work survive in numbers in the US.
Choultse’s preferred genre was winter landscapes, and he frequently depicted views in Switzerland. As the Toronto art dealer G. Blair Laing wrote in his 1979 book Memoirs of an Art Dealer: “He painted spectacular snow scenes in which the light seems to come from behind the canvas and glow. The critics scorned these pictures as photographic and called them non-art – but today this style of painting is called ‘magic-realism’ and is much admired.”
The 2ft-1in-by-2ft-10in oil on canvas titled Soir de Novembre (November Evening), offered by Neue Auctions on June 29, was typical of Choultse’s oeuvre. Acquired from the Wunderly Galleries in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it came by descent in the family of Henry T. Bannon (1867-1950), who was a US Representative for Ohio for two terms from 1905 to 1909. Promising to clean well, it hammered to an internet bidder via LiveAuctioneers for $37,500 ($46,125 with buyer’s premium) against an estimate of $15,000-$25,000.
ORLANDO, FL — You don’t get to romp among the stars if you don’t pay homage to the sound science that sends you there. 20th-century American astronauts generally shunned anything that smacked of touchy-feely woo-woo nonsense. For example, they pronounced the name of the Gemini human spaceflight program as ‘Jim-ih-nee’ instead of ‘Gem-uh-nye’ to distinguish it from the astrological sign.
The Space Shuttle mission that launched on April 6, 1984 as STS-41-C was originally known as STS-13. While official records acknowledge that its name was changed in September 1983, they don’t explain why it was changed. It has been suggested that the powers that be at NASA wanted to avoid using the number 13, which in Western cultures has long been associated with bad luck. (In fairness, NASA had experienced an unlucky 13 by then in the form of the Apollo 13 mission.)
There is no official explanation for why the crew of that 1984 Space Shuttle Challenger mission, which included Robert Crippen, Francis ‘Dick’ Scobee, George ‘Pinky’ Nelson, Terry J. Hart, and James van Hoften, made their own alternate cloth patch, but the motivation might come from a contempt for superstition.
Scobee designed the patch, which mocks the fates with an insouciant ‘Come at me, bro’ attitude. He placed a hissing black cat on the background of a gray storm cloud and emblazoned the creature’s side with the number 13 in pale green. The Space Shuttle Challenger is depicted diving beneath the agitated cat’s arched belly, and the nicknames of the five crew members appear on the patch’s lower half in red and in all caps: CRIP, DICK, TJ, OX, and PINKY.
Crew member Nelson has stated he believes that fewer than 20 examples of the STS-13 mission patch were produced. One appeared at Bid Again Auctions (American Space Museum) in its June 22 Spring Space Memorabilia Sale with an estimate of $100-$500 and secured $1,200, or $1,500 with buyer’s premium.
While this patch enjoyed a happy ending at auction, its designer was not nearly as lucky. Scobee, who was a pilot on the STS-41-C mission aboard the Challenger, was chosen to command the same vessel on a mission known as STS-51-L. It ended tragically when he and six others, including teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, perished on January 26, 1986 when Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff.
DANVERS, MA – In certain realms of pop-culture collectibles, one outsize personality dominates. Those who collect magic memorabilia will want something relevant to Harry Houdini. An assemblage based around rock drummers is incomplete without a piece from Ringo Starr. Fans of boxing cannot rest until Muhammad Ali is represented in their holdings.
No collection based on the ancient game of chess can be considered world-class without an artifact from its greatest and most enigmatic star, Bobby Fischer (1943-2008). The Chicago-born phenomenon burst onto the scene in 1956 at the age of 13, defeating American chess master Donald Byrne in a match subsequently dubbed The Game of the Century.
Fischer would gain enduring fame in 1972 in the game’s World Championship when he defeated the Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky in a contest widely viewed as an extension of the Cold War. He reigned until 1975, when he forfeited his title by default after he and the international organization governing the game failed to reach an agreement on how to stage the match.
When he sat for, and won, an unofficial rematch with Spassky held in Yugoslavia in 1992, he angered the US government, which warned him that playing would violate sanctions it had imposed on the country. In 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan on charges of using a revoked US passport. Iceland ultimately solved his woes by granting him citizenship, and he lived there until his death at the age of 64.
The January 1964 copy of Chess Life magazine presented at JG Autographs on June 11 captured a time when Fischer was still on the rise and notching unique triumphs. Its cover features a black-and-white photograph of the 20-year-old staring at a chess board above the legend ‘11-0!’ printed in red. Those numbers allude to his having achieved a perfect score against Byrne in the 1964 US Championship of chess, a feat that has yet to be equaled.
Bobby Fischer signed that copy of Chess Life magazine in ink. Estimated at $650-$800, it rose to a hammer price of $1,100 and sold for $1,375 with buyer’s premium, making an anonymous chess buff very happy indeed.
BERLIN – A fine example of Thai silversmithing sold well above its estimate, hammering for €17,000 ($18,580) and selling for €22,440 ($24,530) with buyer’s premium at Historia Auctionata on June 19. The 9in (23cm) parcel gilt and niello pumpkin-form tea kettle probably dated to the 1870s.
Thai silver is often overshadowed by better-known genres of silver from other parts of Asia. Pieces are sometimes cataloged as Chinese export – particularly as some, such as this tea kettle, were made by emigre artisans working in Siam and have Chinese character marks to the base. The niello (phra pin klao) and associated enameling techniques are thought to have been introduced to Thailand either by the Portuguese or the Persians.
Niello blossomed during the reign of King Rama III (1788-1851), a champion and patron of Thai decorative arts, and became a speciality of the southern Thai city of Nakhon Si Thammarat. Items of this quality were typically commissioned by members of the extended Siamese royal family and made it to the West as diplomatic gifts. The subject is amply covered in Thai Silver and Nielloware, a 2019 book penned by collector Paul Bromberg.
THOMASTON, ME – Following the Franco-Prussian war, when Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by Germany, workers at the Sarreguemines factory rejected German nationality and brought important technical skills and artistry to Choisy-le-Roi, located near Paris. By the time of the Paris Exhibition in 1878, it was Hippolyte Boulenger’s Choisy-le-Roi that was the best French maker of majolica.
Choisy-le-Roi was aided by the input of two sculptors who had worked at the Minton factory: the animalier Paul Comolera and the neoclassicist Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse.
Among the most impressive pieces are a series of monumental bird vases modeled by Comolera in the mid-1870s. The example offered by Thomaston Place Auction Galleries at the Summer Splendor sale on June 28-29 stood 2ft high and depicted the distinctive French breed of domestic chicken, a poule de Houdan. It was not in the best condition – most notably, the chick to the base was missing – but it nonetheless took $4,250 ($5,312 with buyer’s premium) against an estimate of $1,000-$1,500.
