BRADFORD, SIMMONS TO LEAD GROGAN’S FINE ART AUCTION Dedham, MA – Grogan and Company Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers announces their upcoming September 30th Auction will include over 700 lots of Fine Art, Furniture, Decorative Works of Art, Silver,
News-Antique.com - Sep 20,2012 - The highlight of the fine art offerings is Low Tide, Labrador, a 20 x 30 inch oil on canvas by celebrated 19th century Hudson River School artist William Bradford. Born in New Bedford, a fishing town along the coast of Massachusetts, Bradford was best known for his dramatic paintings of icebergs and Arctic landscapes, which were inspired by his seven voyages to Newfoundland and Greenland between 1861-1869. On his last voyage, which departed in July of 1869, Bradford set out aboard the Panther, a 325 ton sealing ship, for Newfoundland on an expedition funded by art collector and New York banker, LeGrand Lockwood. Like his previous voyages, Bradford recorded what he saw in pencil and oil sketches, but this time he brought along two photographers, William Dunmore and John Critcherson. By August, the Panther had to turn around and return due to impenetrable ice. In 1873, Bradford published a collection of albumen photographs, taken on the voyage by Dunmore and Critcherson, in a book titled The Arctic Regions, documenting his 1869 expedition to Newfoundland. The Arctic Regions was a huge success and became instrumental in advancing Bradford’s career, resulting in numerous prominent commissions for his luminous views of the Arctic region, the most notable being from Queen Victoria. This 1888 panoramic view of a fishing village along the coast of Labrador, came from a Lexington, Massachusetts estate and is estimated to sell in the $40,000-60,000 range.
Another fine art highlight is an impressionist portrait by Concord born artist and member of the “Ten”, Edward Simmons. The Reflection, a 24 x 24 inch oil on canvas, depicting a woman in profile contemplating her reflection in a small hand held mirror, was exhibited at M. Knoedler & Co.’s exhibition of Paintings by ‘The Ten’ in 1916. The painting, from a Westwood estate, has descended within the family of the original owner until now and is estimated to sell in the $20,000-30,000 range.
A collection old master paintings from the estate of a Somerville Massachusetts Collector, who spent 40 years as a Boston art director, features a Portrait of Angela Chigi created about 1679-1680 by Jacob Ferdinand Voet. Voet, a Dutch artist who traveled painting portraits of the noble class throughout Italy between 1679-1684, was banned from Rome for his female portraits showing too much décolletage. Angela Chigi, one of the eleven Chigi princesses of Agostino Chigi and Maria Borghese, was sent to the Sienese nunnery of S. Girolamo in Campansi in 1680. This portrait, depicting Angela at about 14 years of age, was created just before her investiture. An old photograph of the portrait, illustrated on page 178 of Francesco Petrucci’s book, Ferdinand Voet, detto Ferdinando De’ Ritratti, published by Bozzi of Rome, lists the work as “a lost portrait from the Baron Messinger Collection, 1910”. The newly discovered canvas has suffered damage and is thus estimated at $2,000-4,000.
Other American fine art highlights include two landscapes by George Inness, Sr. The first, Landscape with Cows, an oil on canvas circa 1891,
