Lot
24, "The Summer Cloud," by Winslow Homer, watercolor on paper, 13 1/2
by 19 3/4 inches, 1881
Lot
24 is a good watercolor on paper by Winslow Homer (1836-1910) entitled
"The Summer Cloud." It measures 13 1/2 by 19 3/4 inches and was
painted in 1881. It was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington in
1995-6. The lot depicts two women huddling in the lee of a
flat-bottomed fishing boat called the "Summer Cloud" in the fishing
village and artist's colony of Cullercoats near Tynemouth in
England. The lot has an estimate of $1,500,000 to
$2,500,000. It sold
for $1,800,000.
Lot
4, "Yacht in a Cove, Gloucester," by Winslow Homer, watercolor on
paper, 10 by 13 3/4 inches, 1880
Lot 4 is a
good watercolor on paper by Homer entitled "Yacht in a Cove,
Gloucester." It measures 10 by 13 3/4 inches and was painted in
1880. It was exhibited at Kennedy Galleries in New York in
1972 and was once in the collection of John T. Dorrance Jr. and
was acquired by Mr. Taubman at Sotheby's in 1869.
The catalogue provides the following commentary on the lot by Katherine
E. Manthorne, a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University
of New York:
"Certainly
Winslow Homer’s art was reborn when he left behind what he regarded as
the bondage of a Boston lithography firm and the horrors of Civil War
battlefields for the rugged beauty of this busy New England seaport.
Having practiced watercolor since that first visit in 1873, he returned
in the summer of 1880 to further his studies in the medium. This time
he took up residence on Ten Pound Island, in the middle of Gloucester
Harbor. Named in 1644 in reference to its usage as a place for grazing
rams (a “pound” was an old English measure for how much land a sheep or
ram needed for grazing), it provided the perfect retreat for a New York
based artist who famously kept out prying eyes when he was working by
placing a sign on the studio door “Winslow Homer is not at home.”...
Art dealer J. Eastman Chase recalled: “Here he lived for one summer
rowing across to the town only when in need of materials. The freedom
from intrusion which he found in this little spot was precisely to his
liking.” It was an incredibly productive interlude, when he produced
over 100 watercolors including Yacht in a Cove, Gloucester. By December Doll & Richards, the
Boston gallery that would handle his work for the remainder of his
career, exhibited them to great acclaim....
The mile and a half wide mouth of Gloucester’s outer harbor is marked
on the west by Norman’s Woe and on the east by the Eastern Point
Lighthouse. During that summer we can imagine Homer exploring every
rocky outcropping and cove along its waterfront, both on foot and by
boat. To make this watercolor he likely positioned himself along the
western shore of the outer harbor, near where Stage Fort Park stands
today. There the grassy slopes still descend down to the water’s edge,
much as Homer depicted them. His predecessor Fitz Henry Lane rendered
this spot many times, including his Stage Rocks and Western Shore
of Gloucester Outer Harbor (1857; National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.). For local resident Lane deep historical significance
imbued this geographical site, thought to be the first place where the
English settlers landed and constructed their fledgling community, the
term “stage” referring to the fish flakes they would erect there for
salting and drying the cod....For the visitor Homer, its value seems to
have been in the striking combination of topography and light.
Although Homer rarely commented on his own art, he insisted that an
artist should strive for “the truth of that which he wishes to
represent,” which could be attained only by observing in “out-door
light.”...As he elaborated: “Out-doors you have the sky overhead giving
one light; then the reflected light from whatever reflects; then the
direct light of the sun: so that, in the blending and suffusing of
these several illuminations, there is no such thing as a line to be
seen anywhere.”...A quick glance at Yacht in a Cove, Gloucester bears
out his remarks; the haze of the sky and the broken reflections on the
water make even the horizon line difficult to discern. A new subtlety
is apparent in his handling of the watercolor, which he allows to
puddle and soak the page, leaving behind clouds and slight movement of
water’s surface that appear more as aqueous traces and stains rather
than as deliberately painted forms. The boats and island receding
toward the horizon along with the grassy sliver of land in the left
foreground function as accents in a design rather than participating in
a human narrative. In his later years, after he settled in Prout’s
Neck, Maine Homer will distill his art down to the essence of land,
sea, and sky, devoid of human figures. Here we have a foreshadowing of
that later development: a picture that encourages the viewer to
contemplate the seacoast in this protected cove, with the yacht sailing
close to shore, in a moment of tranquil beauty."
The lot has an estimate of $400,000 to
$600,000. It failed to sell.
Lot
18, "The Beach at Long Branch, New Jersey," by Francis Augustus Silva,
oil on canvas, 12 by 24 inches, circa 1869
Lot
18 is a very nice coastal scene by Francis Augustus Silva (1835-1886)
entitled "The Beach at Long Branch, New Jersey." An oil on
canvas, it measures 12 by 24 inches and was painted circa 1869.
It has a modest estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. It failed to sell.
Lot
12, "Roses," by Charles Demuth, watercolor and pencil on paper, 17 7/8
by 11 7/8 inches, 1926
Lot 12 is a
very fine floral watercolor and pencil on paper entitled "Roses" by
Charles Demuth (1883-1935). It measures 17 7/8 by 11 7/8 inches
and was painted in 1926. It has an estimate of $400,000 to
$600,000. It failed to sell.
Lot
7, "Merry Go-Round," by Reginald Marsh, tempera on linen mounted on
masonite, 36 by 48 inches, 1930
Lot 7 is a
large and wonderful tempera on linen mounted on masonite by Reginald
Marsh (1898-1954) entitled "Merry Go-Round." The catalogue notes
that Mr. Taubman's "collection of works by Marsh showcases the artist
at the height of his creative powers," adding that "from Central Park,
to the Metropolitan Opera, to Coney Island, these pictures reveal
Marsh’s unparalleled ability to represent the chaotic, evolving and
vibrant world around him in a wide range of media. When considered
together, they also reveal Mr. Taubman’s admiration for this artist
who, with his keen eye and in his distinctive style, captured the
spirit of 1930s and 1940s New York City unlike any other."
The catalogue
provides the following fine commentary on the painting by Marilyn
Cohen, an assistant professor at The New School, Parsons:
"Born 1898 in Paris to expatriate American painters, Reginald Marsh is
best known for his paintings of the masses at their leisure in New York
City. Financially secure, given an inheritance from a grandfather in
the Chicago meatpacking industry, Marsh had a studio on 14th
Street near Union Square from which he could observe the urban hub-bub
as it was evolving in 1920s and 1930s New York. Here was a newly
metropolitan population in contrast to the rural society of
nineteenth-century America, and Marsh was thoroughly absorbed in
recording it. Marsh’s paintings exude the energy of public life—its
spectacles, whether they be the burlesque shows, subway crowds, 14th
Street shoppers, sideshows or bathers on Coney Island. Coney Island was
in fact a venue only recently available to working-class New Yorkers
via the subway connection of Manhattan to Brooklyn in 1915. It is the
nature of leisure for the working class—rowdy, desperate and
flashy—that Marsh represented.
Clearly Marsh himself was not part of the class he depicted. Educated
in New Jersey at the private Lawrenceville School and then at Yale, the
painter had worked on the Yale Record as a draftsman. Coming
to Manhattan after graduation, he was hired by the Daily News and
then by the newly inaugurated The New Yorker magazine to draw
the various entertainments the city provided. Marsh’s newspaper and
magazine drawings captured the restless cacophony of New York. He
regularly attended vaudeville and burlesque shows, illustrating the
various acts performing there as well as the crowds outside the movie
theaters, at the Coney Island parks and beaches, and down-at-their-luck
on the Bowery. His encounter with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art
Students League in 1929 encouraged him to render painted versions of
these popular subjects. Equally important, Benton’s use of tempera, the
medium of the Old Masters, allowed Marsh to translate his intensely
graphic style into paint in ways in which oil painting had failed him.
Unceasingly at work as an artist in the city, Marsh sketched,
photographed and painted constantly. In fact, at his death he left over
200 sketchbooks, thousands of photographs, watercolors, prints and
daily calendars, all of which offered detailed accountings of his
output. At the same time that he studied the streets, he studied
anatomy; he was also looking at the paintings of Eugène Delacroix,
Peter Paul Rubens and Titian whether at New York City’s The
Metropolitan Museum of Art or on trips to Europe. What made Marsh’s art
so thrilling, and continues to titillate the spectator, is the
documentary realism of his art—the newspaper headlines, candy wrappers,
and theater marquees—all carefully recorded and incorporated into his
paintings and prints using compositions taken from the Old Masters.
This combination creates a paradox in his work, one discussed and
analyzed by art historians seeking to unravel the personal and social
character of his art. Marsh’s consistent reuse of subjects and themes
over a 30-year period speaks to personal obsessions as well as to
social change in the role of women and men during the Great Depression.
This fusion of disparate elements and concerns expressed his own
distance from his subjects, an attempt to overlay these raucous scenes
with some measure of order. There can be no doubt that Marsh was
attracted to the erotic, disorderly crowds he documented. He was an
heir to Baudelaire’s flaneur, a voyeur afoot in the city, in this case
a city situated within a historical period of economic trauma. Marsh’s
paintings have been labeled ‘carnivalesque’ by the cultural historian
Jackson Lears in the ways they challenge the morality of the American
way of life. The painter’s voyeurism is evident in the many subjects
that are themselves performance-based whether Coney Island sideshows or
burlesque theaters with marquees and banners that call out to onlookers
loudly offering them relief from their daily troubles. His paintings
tilt up and out to the spectator, beckoning them to enter a labyrinth
of bodies. Above all, the pull of Marsh’s subject matter, literally and
figuratively, is his ‘woman.’ Marsh’s burlesque queen, his movie siren
or the female carousel rider can be read as one and the same woman.
This woman takes over Marsh’s works, inviting the spectator into the
scene much as her fleshiness and gaudy costuming captivated the artist
himself.
It is this woman that we see in Marsh’s iconic 1930 painting Merry-Go-Round.
Seated on a carousel horse whose mouth is permanently agape with
excitement, she is carried aloft and along by the centrifugal force of
the carousel. Two other women are also visible in the composition. One
is clearly ogled by a man to her right, just as the spectator (or
Marsh) may have been ogling the central woman set apart by her
turquoise dress and hat. The painting relates to a 1930 etching
of the same subject (and a 1931 lithograph) illustrated in Norman
Sasowsky’s 1976 catalogue of Marsh’s prints; at the time that Sasowsky
wrote, however, the location of this painting was unknown. The subject
also relates to such Old Master prototypes as Titian’s Rape of
Europa wherein Europa is thrown off balance atop the bull
spiriting her off, thus making Merry-Go-Round a
characteristic Marsh revelation of an Old Master theme found in a
contemporary setting! The graphic turmoil is unmistakable and akin to
the erotic destruction of Delacroix’ 1827 Death of Sardanapalus which
includes an ornamentally dressed horse at its left; the wind, the
speed, the nature of abduction and seduction all coalesce in Marsh’s
image to underscore layered meanings for the artist extant in the
everyday. Marsh said he loved Coney Island because he could see
thousands of unclothed bodies on the beach reminiscent of the great
compositions of Michelangelo. Likewise, Coney Island rides such as the
merry-go-round seen in Merry-Go-Round accessed legendary
themes for Marsh pulsating with a life force that daily surrounded him."
The lot, a
Marsh masterpiece, has an estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. It failed to sell.
Lot 8, "New York Street," by Stuart Davis, oil on canvas, 11 by 16
inches, 1941
Lot
8 is a fine small oil on canvas by Stuart Davis (1892-1964) entitled
"New York Street." It measures 11 by 16 inches and the "mat"
section is part of the painting. It was executed in 1941.
The catalogue provides the
following commentary by Diane Kelder, professor emerita at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York:
"During his long career, Stuart Davis
was the consummate painter of modern American life. His idiosyncratic
vernacular Cubism drew inspiration from the streets of New York,
advertising, consumer culture and jazz. A distinctive feature of his
methodology was Davis’s reassessment of earlier works, a practice which
intensified in the last two decades of his life.
Completed in October 1941 New York Street is based on House
and Street, 1931, a larger canvas which had been acquired nine
months earlier by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Years later, the
artist would characterize its bi-partite composition as a “mental
collage.” The left side of New York Street retains the main
elements of the earlier painting such as the street sign and the Bell
Telephone logo which provided clues to the location, whereas SMITH, a
timely reference to the state’s former governor is playfully replaced
by the rather commonplace JONES. The right side, while repeating the
curving structure and grids of the Third Avenue El against a background
of office buildings, now features a fairly ornate armchair.
Its rich palette of turquoise, orange and pink, decorative flourishes
and painterly execution distinguish New York Street from the
hard-edged brightness of its predecessor. Appropriately, the canvas was
shown in 1943 at the legendary Downtown Gallery where House and
Street had made its first appearance."
The lot has an estimate of $250,000 to $450,000. It sold for $490,000.
Lot
10, "Nonchalance," by William McGregor Paxton, oil on canvas, 27 1/4 by
22 inches
Lot
10 is an excellent oil on canvas by William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941)
entitled "Nonchalance." It measures 27 1/4 by 22 inches.
The catalogue entry provides the following commentary about the
charming coquettishness of this work:
"Educated at the Cowles School of Art
in Boston, where he studied with Dennis Miller Bunker, and in Jean-Léon
Gérôme’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, William McGregor
Paxton was known as a painter of exquisite interiors inhabited almost
exclusively by women. As Ellen Wardwell Lee writes, “This Bostonian
found his most congenial subjects in the everyday life around him as it
was exemplified by young women pursuing their routine activities, in
the decor of upper class New England. This motif served him admirably
as a vehicle to convey the magic whereby chiaroscuro exalts beautiful
forms and envelops the humblest objects in mystery, to orchestrate
unusual color harmonies keyed by the bright hues of female apparel and
to construct subtly balanced compositions in such a way that all these
elements contributed to make his pictures paeans to feminine
loveliness. In so doing he recorded what he saw in statements of an
unsurpassed veracity harnessed by the impressionistic unity which
raises truth to the dignity of high art” (William McGregor Paxton
1869-1941, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1979, p. 57). In Nonchalance,
Paxton focuses on his beautiful subject in repose, bringing the viewer
into an exotic and elegant scene. The abstract patterned backdrop
against which the figure is set is a Japanese screen that appears in a
number of his paintings. Captured by the artist’s brush, an ephemeral
moment becomes a lasting image of serene contemplation and quiet
beauty. Affixed to the stretcher of Nonchalance is a fragment
of a label from The Corcoran Gallery of Art with the partial title Idle…
suggesting this painting may have been exhibited in the Fifth
Exhibition Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists of
1914-15 as Idleness."
The lot has a modest estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. It sold for $187,500.
