Current & Coming |
The Frick Announces New Book Prize
March 5, 2009 | The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library in New York has just announced the launch of a biennial prize honoring the publication of a scholarly book that contributes to the understanding of the history of collecting in the United States. The initial award of $25,000 will be made in November; the first three awards will be known as the Sotheby's Book Prize, thanks to generous funding from the auction house. Nominated books-or museum exhibition catalogues-should address collecting in the United States in any category of the fine and decorative arts, Western or non-Western, from colonial times to the present. For further details or questions, e-mail center@frick.org.
The Sotheby's Prize is the latest addition to the array of programs undertaken by the Center for the History of Collecting in America, which the Frick created in 2007 to encourage scholarship in this area of historical inquiry. This weekend it is holding a free symposium entitled "The American Artist as Coll…» More
The Market |
Endnotes: A Dorflinger Masterpiece
February 22, 2009 | Objects of high quality continue to bring strong prices," says Jason Woody of Woody Auction, headquartered in Douglass, Kansas, following the firm's sale late last year of the cut-glass and silver pitcher shown here. Made in the first decade of the twentieth century by the Dorflinger glass company of White Mills, Pennsylvania, the piece is an extremely fine example of what is known as American brilliant period cut glass, which dominated the market for luxury glass for some thirty years, between about 1880 and 1910, according to Jane Shadel Spillman, curator of American glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. Add the color, the silver mount made by Tiffany and Company, and the probable original owner, and it is little wonder that when the gavel fell, the pitcher had brought $49,000.
The Market |
Washington alive and well
February 18, 2009 | 
Despite the ongoing difficulties in the United States economy, to judge by a President's Day weekend sale at Skinner Auction in Boston, Americans continue to place a lot of faith in the Founding Fathers. In lively bidding in the room and on the phone, a portrait miniature of George Washington brought $336,000-the second highest price ever paid for an American portrait miniature and some $30,000 more than a nearly identical example sold at Skinner last November. Both were painted by Robert Field at the request of Martha Washington in 1801 for presentation to two of her step-granddaughters-this one for Ann Calvert Stuart-and both descended in the family, although their exact whereabouts was not known until the recent sales. This one went to a private collector, while the one sold in November went to the Yale University Art Gallery (for more about it, see Endnotes in the January 2009 issue of the magazine, available online here).
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Discovery |
Endnotes: An Icon for Yale
Not all the news about the economy in general-and as related to the decorative arts and painting in particular-is bad. Late last year Skinner in Boston auctioned a miniature of George Washington by Robert Field that fetched more than $300,000-some ten times its presale estimate. According to the portrait miniature specialist Elle Shushan of Philadelphia, who was the successful bidder on behalf of the Yale University Art Gallery, this is the second or third highest price ever paid for an American portrait miniature. The record ($1,216,000) was set in the palmier days of early 2001 for another Washington miniature, that one painted from life by John Ramage in 1789 and now in a private collection.
Gemellion, Artist unknown, Limoges, France, 13th century Champlevé Enamel on Copper, 8 7/8” diameter Collection of The Walters’ Art
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