Paintings & Pistols Bring Top Prices at Garth's Garth’s Auctions’ Annual Labor Day Americana sale held on September 4 and 5, 2009 in Delaware, Ohio. was a virtual showdown among savvy buyers competing for fine art, furniture, and historic firearms.
The combination of "antiques, camaraderie, tradition, and plain, old fun" was touted as the focus of Garth’s Auctions’ Annual Labor Day Americana sale held on September 4 and 5, 2009 in Delaware, Ohio. Once the bidders gathered and viewed the array of material featuring paintings of American Indians, a few cowboys, and a collection of historic firearms, the two-day event was propelled from “plain, old fun” to a virtual showdown among savvy buyers. The fire powered bidding was underscored by strong sale attendance, a large quantity of absentee bids, the “live” online bidding. as well as packed phone lines all leading to a gross sale total of nearly $800,000 including buyer‘s premium.
Illustrated on the front cover of the color catalog, an oil painting by California artist, Frank Tenney Johnson(1874-1939) attracted the most phone bid requests of the weekend with a whopping 14 lines reserved for the lot that led off the Saturday morning session. Johnson has long been recognized for his dynamic depictions of the West and his works are in high demand. As such, the excitement on the faces of the braves in the painting were reflected in the mood of bidders competing for this painting both in the room and by phone as it opened on the floor before selling to a phone bidder speaking with Vice-President and Auctioneer Amelia Jeffers. The hammer price was an outstanding $196,250 and Jeffers commented that while research is still in progress, “that price likely makes it among the top 30 paintings sold at auction by the artist“. Titled Navajo Horse Race on the stretcher, the 26 ½” x 32 ½” oil on canvas was signed and dated 1927 in the lower left. The painting was consigned by a longtime collector from Detroit, Michigan who inherited it from his grandfather. The outstanding provenance also indicated that the grandfather had purchased the painting directly from the artist.
Generally, portraits comprised the group of other hotly contested paintings with the most desired depicting naval officer Oliver Hazard Perry. Shown seated before a red drape and a ship flying the American flag in the background, the bidding sailed to a halt at $7,931 - more than triple the high estimate. Other paintings of interest included a portrait by William Aiken Walker. The 18 ½” x 12 ½” oil on board showed an older male slave balancing a basket of cotton on his head and standing in the field of cotton and it hammered down at $8,519. A colorful 1898 portrait of an Ohio farm by Ohio artist Rudolf Tschudi, which retained a lovely bird’s eye maple frame, depicted a prosperous farm with orchards and white picket fence and made double the high estimate achieving $3,290. An unsigned family portrait of 3 children with their cat fell within estimate at $3,055.
Guns were also a huge part of the auction gross. With the initial portion of a southern collection of firearms and edged weapons carrying a pre-auction estimate of approximately $50/70,000, the start of this
