BOSTON –-(Ammoland.com)- Copley Fine Art Auctions will hold its eleventh annual Sporting Sale on July 24th. The event will be hosted at the Hotel 1620 in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. The sale will take place on Sunday, July 24th, and Saturday, July 23rd will see an auction preview party and a decoy and sporting art dealer show. On Sunday, July 24th, bidding on over 470 lots will begin at 10am, with preview times running from 8am until 10am.
Perennially balanced between fine art and decoys, Copley will offer a wide range of American, folk, sporting, wildlife, and western art. With its reputation for honesty, integrity, and accuracy, Copley continues to set benchmarks in these fields. On August 1st, Copley will be expanding and moving its headquarters to historic Hingham, Massachusetts. This beautiful coastal shipping port, first settled in 1635, has a rich history.
A watercolor by American master Andrew Wyeth titled Terns on Little Green Island, Maine and painted in 1940 will highlight the selection of American paintings ($70/80,000), along with Frank W. Benson’s watercolor Poling the Canoe ($50/60,000). A.B. Frost’s watercolor, Grouse Shooting in the Rhododendrons($50/70,000), was reproduced as a print by The Derrydale Press in 1933 and is heralded as “an excellent study of an English setter pointing a bird.”
Western-themed items are led by Robert Farrington Elwell’s oil painting The Dying Day ($20/25,000) depicting a packhorse on the Wapiti Range, North Fork of the Shoshone River Mountain Range. The Massachusetts-born Elwell managed Buffalo Bill Cody’s ranches in Wyoming, in addition to going on pack trips with Cody, who wrote, “Say what kind of a cook are you? I agree to cook if you will learn how to pack. I am going to make an all round Mountain Man of you. I hope we will spend many years together in our beloved mountains. And you will be known as Buffalo Bill’s Rocky Mountain Artist.”
Paintings by artists such as Robert Abbett, Frank W. Benson, George Browne, Roland Clark, Richard LaBarre Goodwin, Owen J. Gromme, David Hagerbaumer, Lynn Bogue Hunt, Francis Lee Jaques, David A. Maass, Gustav Muss-Arnolt, Edmund Osthaus, Ogden Pleissner, Aiden Lassell Ripley, William J. Schaldach, Frank Vining Smith, Milton Weiler, John Whorf, will be available, along with works by contemporary sporting artists Luke Frazier, John Swan, Peter Corbin, Chet Reneson, and many others.
This summer’s sale will include a diverse grouping of decoys, with important works on offer from a wide range of carving regions. A black-bellied plover by Massachusetts maker Lothrop Holmes and out of the collection of Dr. James M. McCleery highlights the offering ($150/175,000), and waterfowl decoys are led by a wigeon drake by John Blair, Sr. of Philadelphia ($70/90,000). Also available will be a hollow black-bellied plover by a Massachusetts carver ($60/80,000), a preening mallard hen by Illinois carver Bert Graves and painter Catherine Elliston ($45/65,000), and a wigeon hen by North Carolina maker Lee Dudley with impeccable form, execution, rarity, condition, and provenance ($40/60,000).
Online bidding on over 470 objects will be available through Bidsquare. A full color catalog will be available, and preview images can be seen at copleypreview.com. The auction will take place at Hotel 1620 in Plymouth, MA, with a cocktail preview from 5pm to 7pm on Saturday, July 23. Bidding will commence at 10am on Sunday, July 24, with a preview from 8am to 10am. For more information, a full schedule of events, or to order a catalog please send an email to [email protected], call 617.536.0030, or visit copleyart.com.
Images to include:
- Lothrop Holmes (1824-1899), Black-Bellied Plover, c. 1880, ($150/175,000)
- John Blair, Sr. (1843-1929), Wigeon Drake, c. 1880, ($80/100,000)
- Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917-2009), Terns on Little Green Island, Maine, watercolor, 13 by 19 ½ inches, ($70/80,000)
- Arthur Burdett Frost (1859-1928), Grouse Shooting in the Rhododendrons, watercolor, 17 ½ by 25 ¾ inches, ($50/70,000)
- Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), Poling the Canoe, watercolor, 20 by 24 ½ inches, ($50/60,000)
- Robert Farrington Elwell (1874-1962), The Dying Day, oil on canvas, 49 by 38 ½ inches, ($20/25,000)
Visit Copley Fine Art Auctions at www.copleyart.com