Date: Fri 25-Sep-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Farmer

Full Text:

Museum Curator Consigns To Ken Farmer

w/4 cuts

By Rita Easton

RADFORD, VA. -- The Farmer Auction Center hosted a September 12 sale by Ken

Farmer Auctions & Estates, following a September 11 preview. Porcelain, Old

Master prints and fine art, Americana, Orientalia, and decorative items were

featured, the majority of the 421 lots consigned by Mark Clark, the former

curator of the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Va.

The Clark items included drawings by Paul Cadmus, Whistler, and numerous

etchings. Frank Osborn of the gallery noted that 90 percent of the audience

remained until the final lot crossed the block.

Reaching the highest bid of the day at $32,000, a Sixteenth Century Italian

oil on canvas, tentatively attributed to Prospero Fontano, went to a New York

State buyer. The 38« by 30 inch canvas, which depicts a woman and child, had

hung in the Chrysler Museum.

"We tried to get the proper attributions to it," said Osborne, "from sources

in New York and Italy, including many faxes exchanged with a woman who is the

expert on Fontano, but we never really got a proper attribution, even though

we spent $1,000 trying to find it." The pre-auction estimate on the work was

$15/20,000.

A reticulated porcelain basket, made circa 1780 by Caughley, sold to a dealer

at $3,500; and a circa 1760 oval platter, an example of Staffordshire-made

porcelain with salt glaze and having a gadrooned border, originally purchased

in Yorktown, Va., copied from a silver tray, was purchased by the biggest

dealer in porcelain in the United States, winning the lot over a Missouri

buyer for $1,000, according to Osborn.

An oil on canvas portrait of Walter Rudding, painted in 1807 by William

Artaud, realized $5,000.

A Paul Cadmus pencil drawing of a male nude fetched $5,500; "Portrait of Mike"

by Cadmus, in colored pencil on toned paper, garnered $3,000; a third Cadmus,

an etching depicting two boys on the beach, made $6,000; and a fourth Cadmus,

"Coney Island," reached $7,000.

An oil on canvas by Ronald Himler, "Yellow Hair Comes," featuring two American

Indians on horseback, brought $3,500; and a Joseph Jansen oil on canvas, a

dramatic Alps scene with a Swiss chalet in the valley, achieved $6,500.

A Baltimore butler's desk, circa 1790-1810, 42 by 21, by 43« inches, reached

$7,000; a cherry Pennsylvania chest of drawers, circa 1770, with two board top

and four graduated drawers sold to a Mississippi buyer at $7,000; an

Eighteenth Century American or English round tea table realized $3,000; a

married Eighteenth Century highboy reached $6,000, the piece purchased by a

buyer in Ireland; and a Salem, Mass., Federal card table, circa 1790-1820,

estimated at $8/12,000, reached the high estimate of $12,000.

"[The card table] had an exceptional rosewood veneer," Osborn said, "In fact,

it was my favorite of the auction. I wanted to buy it myself."

Prices quoted do not reflect a required 12 percent buyer's premium.