Hummingbirds, Hamilton’s Pistols, and the ‘Acme of Perfection’ Table at Auction

This week’s Americana sales in New York reveal the art market at wholesale.

E arlier this week, I wrote about The Winter Show, the year’s marquee dealer show of antique American furniture, silver, clocks, glass, textiles, and paintings, augmented these days by European things and some contemporary art. Since the ’70s, Christie’s and Sotheby’s have timed their sales of these things, called Americana, for the same week. American collectors and curators from all over the country descend on New York City to see what’s new.

What the dealers sell is retail, at markups starting at 100 percent. What the auction houses sell is wholesale, though sometimes auction sales ignore the laws of prudence and common sense. I follow both markets. This year, as always, the Americana sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s are chockablock with this-and-that, and, to challenge preconceived notions of Americana, I spotted only one duck decoy and few weathervanes. Over the past week and a half, and seven or eight sales, on the block went portraits of Washington, Alexander Hamilton’s pistols, two cigar-store Indians, what seems like a ton of silver, a case of bourbon, and a tea table known in the furniture world as the “Acme of Perfection,” among hundreds of other objects.

Yes, there was a shock or two. Edmonia Lewis’s Hiawatha’s Marriage, a marble sculpture from 1870, had an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000 but went at Sotheby’s for a mind-boggling $1,633,000. That’s a lotta moolah. The sculpture “relates to Lewis’s intersectional identity” as both African American and Native American.

Mr. Market does the craziest things.

Over at Christie’s, Champagne bottles were surely uncorked after the sale of Joshua Johnson’s Mrs. Martha Dorsey and Mary Ann Dorsey, from around 1804. Charming as it is, with an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000, it sold for a whopping $1,134,000 at the January 19 auction. That’s a pile for a folk-art portrait, even though Johnson is a mixed-race artist in our age of diversity and the portrait has been in the same family for 220 years.

Plumbing the marketplace in one object is risky business, but the Tale of the Tall Clock is telling. At Sotheby’s, a tall — nine-foot-tall — Chippendale case clock made in Philadelphia around 1765 and with musical chimes sold for $803,000 in 2004. Among its tunes is “God Save the King.” This was, at the time, a world record for a tall case clock. On Tuesday it sold for $406,000 at Sotheby’s. It has all its original components and an impressive paper trail. We know it was cleaned and tuned at a clock shop in Philadelphia in 1820, and it was probably displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876.

Why the drop? The clock is just as rare, gorgeous, and tuneful now as then. Lots of Americans not only don’t know our history but actively denigrate it, and this affects markets. And then there’s the curse of brown furniture.

Then there’s the “Acme of Perfection” tea table, the scalloped, tilt-top table made in Philadelphia around 1755. It’s an icon in the American decorative-arts community. Made by “the Garvan Carver,” and we don’t know his name, it has a single pedestal leg sculpted with fluid but muscular acanthus leaves, vines, and garlands that move the eye upward toward a subtly articulated piecrust top. It was owned by the same family for 250 years but was well known among American furniture connoisseurs from William McPherson Horner’s reference to it as “the acme of perfection,” a name that stuck.

It sold at Sotheby’s in 2008 for $1,833,000, bought by Erving and Joy Wolf, a savvy, lovely couple who focused on American decorative arts. They had very good taste. They’re dead now, and their family is selling the collection. On Sunday, it sold, again at Sotheby’s, for $1,016,000, on an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million. Hiawatha’s Marriage aside, at least Sotheby’s judges the market correctly. That’s one of many big changes since the auction house changed hands a few years ago. Before it did, Sotheby’s was notorious for grabbing consignors with impossibly high estimates.

When it comes to American history, many might marinate in smug ignorance, but it’s nice to know that George Washington still has cachet. At Christie’s, Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington from 1795 went for $2.83 million, on an estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

Stuart painted 14 versions of this Washington pose and format, called the Vaughan Type after the patron who first commissioned it. It belonged to the Met, which sold it to replenish its acquisition fund. This is perfectly acceptable and a change from the Met’s 2022 disgusting sale of art to balance its budget, even though its endowment is north of $4 billion. An English businessman bought the picture from Stuart in 1795 as a memento of his dealings in America, and in Britain it stayed until a rich American bought it in 1924.

At Sotheby’s, Charles Wilson Peale’s portrait of Washington, also from 1795, went for $1.63 million, on an estimate of $2 million to $3 million. Stuart’s painting delivers the signature Washington look and has a juicy surface while Peale’s take is more somber. Peale didn’t omit Washington’s smallpox scars from his left cheek.

Christie’s also sold a Washington portrait by Peale’s son, Rembrandt, for $529,000, on an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. Rembrandt painted it in 1852 during an antebellum revival of interest in Washington. He’d met Washington, but his portrait, done more than 50 years after Washington’s death, used a Houdon marble bust as a model. Washington is younger and dressed in his military duds but the look is ever-so-wooden, and Rembrandt is not as famous as his father. Also, Washington sat for Peale, so his 1795 picture looks alive.

Hudson River School painting continues to languish. Something perfect and attractive like Martin Johnson Heade’s Cattleya Orchid with Two Brazilian Hummingbirds sold at Christie’s for $3.44 million, on an estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million. It’s from 1871 and part of a group of small tropical hummingbird paintings that Heade made after a painting trip to the Caribbean and Colombia. Heade intended to produce an illustrated book like Audubon’s Birds of America. Alas, the project never developed. The paintings survive and are sublime.

Other Hudson River School pictures hovered around their low estimates, which were mostly in five figures, or didn’t sell. Prices for old American landscapes and seascapes tumbled about 15 years ago and don’t seem to be recovering. A very nice, big Jasper Cropsey view of cows by a stream surrounded by brilliant fall foliage went for only $30,000 at Christie’s. Sanford Gifford’s Sketch on the Roman Campagna, a precious gem from 1868, provoked not a peep. Though estimated at an affordable $50,000 to $80,000, it didn’t sell. It’s little, around 3 by 7 inches, but sparkles with detail and feeling.

Christie’s Fine Printed and Manuscript Americana sale on January 17 was a listless affair except for a Stamp Act defiance placard posted by the secretive Sons of Liberty group in New York City on October 23, 1765. “The first Man that either distributes or makes use of Stampt Paper,” it reads in ominous cursive, “let him take Care of His House, Person & Effects.” Cue the Jaws music. It concludes with “Vox populi; We dare.”

It’s the earliest known documentary evidence of the colonial rebellion against Great Britain. There’s only one other placard like it. It went for $4,527,000 but was estimated at $4 million to $6 million. I don’t know why Sotheby’s pushed its manuscript Americana sale to the end of January. At only 16 lots, it’s got nothing with the sizzle of “We dare.”

Sotheby’s had two anchor Americana sales, one called “Important” and live, the other online and, well, without a superlative.

In the sans-adjective sale, Sotheby’s Chippendale block-front chest of drawers, made in Boston around 1765, sold for $10,795, on an estimate of $12,000 to $18,000. Ginsberg & Levy, now Levy Galleries, once sold it. It probably came from an old Boston house. It’s stately, with the original hardware, and in good condition, though its feet at one point were replaced. A dealer at, say, The Winter Show would want multiples of what the thing made at Sotheby’s, but buying at auction is risky and you can’t take it back for a refund.

Why, you might ask, is Chinese Export porcelain in an Americana auction? Yes, it’s Chinese art but, starting in the early 19th century, Chinese Export porcelain was a staple in high-end American homes, especially in New England. Men with business in Asia bought it for their wives and, before long, everyone who was anyone had to have it. Lots of Chinese Export porcelain was made for the English, Dutch, and American markets. A rare, lovely, big oval platter from the Qianlong period (1736–95) is decorated with the Old Testament’s “Rebecca at the Well” story. Estimated at $3,000 to $5,000 but with no reserve, it sold for only $1,016, which is a steal.

What’s a happy home without an epergne? Sotheby’s offered a classy, jazzy silver chinoiserie epergne from 1765, on an estimate of $6,000 to $9,000. It didn’t, I’m sad to say, meet the lowest price the consignor would accept, another sign we’re on the cultural skids. Epergnes were originally dessert centerpieces with baskets — this one has nine — for sweets and fruit, though today they’re good for chips and nuts. Pierced wares were popular from the 1740s into the 1760s for their mix of elegance and playfulness. At 151 ounces, it’s hefty.

Christie’s, forever discreet and well-mannered, calls all of its Americana “important.” At both houses, old silver wasn’t in free fall. Rather, sales were without glitter, from flashy Gilded Age centerpieces to colonial porringers, snuff boxes, and canns, which are what we’d call mugs. Old New York money probably chased a tankard from around 1710 that belonged to Henry Beekman, whose grandson, Robert Livingston, signed the Declaration of Independence. Estimated to sell for $40,000 to $60,000, it went for $151,000. Otherwise, old silver ranks with brown furniture and, worse still, doesn’t go in the dishwasher.

Booze is apparently considered Americana now, and I suppose bourbon and rye are American through and through. At Sotheby’s fine whiskey sale on January 20, a twelve-bottle case of Pappy Van Winkle’s 20-year-old family reserve, all from the same barrel, went for $162,000, on an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. It was owned by a fancy San Francisco restaurant called RNM and is from “one of the last single barrels produced by Julian van Winkle III.” Each bottle comes in a red-leather bag. I’m a teetotaler, but insider imbibers tell me the stuff’s very tasty.

I can dream, can’t I? At Christie’s, a Limoges porcelain dinner plate from Lincoln’s White House service was estimated at $3,000 to $5,000 but flew past my budget to $15,120. Mrs. Lincoln ordered it in what’s called royal purple, a color in vogue in Paris in the 1850s, but I’d call it puce. And Hamilton’s pistols, though swanky, aren’t the ones he took to the duel from which he left horizontally and with a fatal bullet hole. They’re one of three pairs of pistols he owned — they sold at Christie’s for $816,000, on an estimate-on-request basis.

I’ll end with a detour and ask whether Winston Churchill’s false chompers are a work of art. Not in the strictest sense, but his dentures will be on the block on February 6 at the Cotswold Auction Company in scenic Cheltenham, a spa town in the U.K. Designed by his dentist, Wilfred Fish, and made around 1939, they were constructed to protect Churchill’s natural — and distinctive — lisp. They surely helped to enable Churchill the performance artist. Churchill died 59 years ago this past Thursday. Bill Buckley considered him one of the great men of the century. Even his dentures deserve a salute.

Churchill wore them during his many speeches in the House of Commons during the Second World War, speeches that are, indisputably, works of art. The estimate is £5,000 to £8,000 ($6,300 to $10,000). They’re the most unusual things I’ve seen in an auction catalogue, besting Truman Capote’s ashes, Queen Victoria’s bloomers, size 45 waist, and a vampire hunting kit with wooden stakes, vials of holy water, pistols firing wooden bullets, mirrors, and crucifixes galore. Essential for any visit to Washington, D.C.