Date: Fri 21-Aug-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Eldreds

Full Text:

Eldred's Exlores Emerging Market

w/3 cuts

EAST DENNIS, MASS. -- The Robert C. Eldred Company, Inc, held an American and

European paintings auction July 23 at its Cape Cod galleries.

The sale featured the Alan J. and Louise Sellars collection of art by American

women, consisting of 162 paintings. Another 22 pieces by women artists -- not

from the collection -- were followed by 130 works of art by men. The strength

of the sale surpassed last year's event due in part to the increasing interest

in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

According to Eldred's, the consignment of the Sellars collection has given the

gallery an opportunity to explore an emerging market. By the early 1900s, art

schools in America began to accept women, and venues such as the Fenway

Studios in Boston rented space to women as well as men. Alan Sellars' research

showed that 40 percent of exhibitors during this period were female, and these

artists had won their share of the prizes.

The top price in the Sellars collection was achieved for a three-quarter

portrait of a young woman in a black hat and elegant dress, by Elizabeth Vila

Taylor-Watson (1863-1949). It realized $8,140. Taylor-Watson lived and worked

at Boston's Fenway Studios from 1906-49.

Another star was "Reading in the Garden" by Susan Ricker Knox (1875-1959), who

is featured in the August, 1998 issue of American Art Review. The colorful

rendition of a young woman's profile holding a parasol and a book brought

$7,700.

Other notables included "Thursday Noon Sun," (not from the collection) of a

young woman walking down a hill, by Flora T. McCaig, which sold for $4,180;

"Tiger Lilies," by Marie Atkinson Hull (1890-1980), which sold for $3,080; and

"Cactus and Freesia," by Ethel Pennewill Brown Leach (1878-1960), which

brought $2,860.

The still life "Morning Shadows" by Ada Rayner (born 1901), wife of Henry

Hensche, which realized $2,530, exhibited the qualities of light and shadow

taught by Hensche at the Cape Cod School of Art. "The Musician," a portrait of

a young girl with a flute, by Therese Ferber Bernstein (born 1896) brought

$2,310, and "Sailing Off Cape Ann," an ocean scene with sailboats by

Marguerite Stuber Pearson (1898-1978), who was also a Fenway Studios artist

from 1930-1942, sold for $1,760.

The second half of the sale featured work by men and the leading piece was a

watercolor titled "Flooded Pines" by Frank Weston Benson, which brought

$13,200. A landscape in oil with cottage and pond by Arthur Vidal Diehl sold

for $6,600; an oil of a European market scene by Henry Bacon (American,

1839-1912) reached $5,280; and a seascape titled "The Tempest," by Stanley

Woodward (1890-1970), garnered $4,950.

Henry Hensche was represented by a Provincetown landscape, which sold for

$3,520. A landscape titled "Rocky Arroyo" by Charles Arthur Fries (1874-1939)

brought $3,300; a matted print of a moose by Carl C.M. Rungius (1903-1963)

sold for $2,860; and "Salt Water Farm, Martha's Vineyard 1987" by Thomas B.

Higham (Twentieth Century) brought $2,750.

Works by European artists included an 1891 oil of children playing in a barn

by James Charles (British, 1851-1906), which sold for $6,600; a portrait of a

peasant woman by Georges Laugee (French, born 1853), which brought $3,960; and

a European beach scene at sunset by George W. Nicholson (1832-1912), which

rang up $2,090.

For information, 508/385-3116.