Featured Mollie Crowther Oil paintings Update

Hi all,
I have finished with the minor restoration and framed them in matching frames.
I thought I would share with everyone my experience in dealing with auction houses on these pieces.
I'm going to paste the actual emails from a couple.
First Skinners in MA. didn't deem them worth listing stating they were worth less than $1000.00 for the pair.
Second, Witherells in Sacramento valued them at 500 to 1000 so would list them starting at 250.
This is the one that really made me mad, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sent me this email

"Thank you for your patience during this extremely busy time. I’ve done some research. I have found that this artist has yet to establish a significant auction record. We do not handle works by artists with no, small, or low-value auction records. I’m afraid we will have to pass.

I recommend contacting the artist or their gallery directly to inquire about reselling the piece. Please let me know if I can assist you with anything else."

Obviously this guy did no research

Finally Clars Auction house in San Francicso Oakland

"Thank you for your email. In regards to your two paintings by Mollie Cowther, a preliminary estimate would be $1500-2500 for the pair."
The choice is obvious now.
Here they are ready for auction

 

Good luck, Mikey!

(Do I remember that you had a less than stellar experience with that house previously?)

 

Great job, the blue really pops now! Good luck!

 

That would have been the Albert MÜLLER-LINGKE painting
of the man threading a needle whistling.
Mostly the buyers fault for not wanting to pay the buyers premium so they took it out of my share.

 

Ahhhh. That would qualify.

 

It really all depends who wants them bad enough could go for less than the estimate amount then they take their chunk out too. Pretty much just a gamble

 

With the bidding starting at $750.00 which is 725.00 more than what i have into these i'm really not worried. Life is a gamble. I'm glad my dice are loaded.

 

Best of luck with them Mikey, I hope they do well for you!!! They really look lovely!!!!!

 

!!!!!!! How does that work? Since when does the winning bidder not have to abide by the terms of the auction? My opinion of auction houses, their business ethics & their 'experts' keeps falling.

Have recently played a role in seeing to it that Sotheby's, who will be auctioning a cameo with the signature of a famous 19th century gem engraver prominently on the front, was notified the same cameo was sold just a few months ago with absolutely no indication of such a signature in photos or description. The several of us involved were hoping Sotheby's would withdraw it, since forgeries are detrimental to the value our own signed pieces. Nope. They've decided previous auction house missed it, even though other auctioneer had looked it over well enough to note faint, indecipherable signature scratched into the back. (Which Sotheby's does not show/mention in their description but admits in private correspondence is there.)

In December 2017, the cameo looked like this:


And now it looks like this:


All other specimens of Tommaso Saulini's signature that I have seen have the letters separated, not in cursive like that, & the Ts & Fs are different, so not even a good match:

No doubt it will get picked up on Pinterest, then turn up in search results & become accepted as a genuine Saulini. Maybe this post will also turn up & help counteract it.

Good luck with the auction of the paintings. Good thing you can't really lose.

 

Total surprise to me as well. The auctioneers I used to go to simply didn't give you the item if you didn't pay the full amount, which included the buyer's premium.
I assumed the terms of the auction were like a contract.

 

Best of luck Mickey!

The paintings are beautiful!

 

That particular item never went to auction. I had sent the painting to the auction house when the buyer saw the painting on here. He contacted me and made the offer. I gave him the auction information. I agreed to let them sell it to him before going to auction. He refused to pay more then his offer so they lowered the price to be able to add the buyers premium. Since they had it scheduled to list for much lower than his offer I told them to sell it without knowing they would lower the price to cover buyers fee.

Mike

 

That'll learn you (& us). Thanks for explaining.

 

Thanks for sharing this Mike. So interesting!

The paintings look just beautiful. Best of luck.

 

Awesome