Date: Fri 05-Feb-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

Rafael-Gamble-Easton

Full Text:

Gamble Oil Tops San Rafael Auction

(with 2 cuts)

By Rita Easton

SAN RAFAEL, CALIF. -- Following two preview days, San Rafael Auction Gallery

held an estates sale on January 16. Of the 605 lots offered, 582 sold,

generating a gross of $415,450. The standing-room-only crowd competed with

phone bidders on 25 percent of the auction items.

The two featured estates included the contents of a historic downtown Napa,

Calif., Queen Anne Victorian home, and an Old Sausalito, Calif., hillside

home, both of which were untouched for generations, according to the gallery.

A California collector won the most coveted lot, an oil on canvas by John

Marshall Gamble, which was featured on the catalogue cover. "Poppies and

Lupine" measured 12 by 16 inches and remained in its original, unopened

shadowbox frame. Estimated at $15/25,000, the painting realized $32,000.

A second Gamble, "Still Life of Chrysanthemums," an oil on canvas, sold to a

southern California collector on the phone at $8,500. The canvas had a loss of

paint and damage in an area where it fell off the wall and against the corner

of a table during the 1987 San Francisco earthquake.

"Sheep in a Blizzard," an oil on canvas by Joseph Farquharson, estimated at

$9/12,000, sold to one of five phone bidders at $30,000; a massive Koa dining

table, probably Hawaiian, the 77-inch diameter top being one solid piece of

wood, the center pedestal supported by four paw-like feet, sailed past its

$12,000 high estimate to sell to a phone bidder for $19,000, and an oil on

board by George Sotter, "Sunny Day in the Harbor," estimated at $2,5/3,500,

went to a Pennsylvania collector/dealer at $6,500.

From the estate of the novelist Theodore Dreiser, an early Eighteenth Century

gilded and carved papal armchair, 70 inches high, made $5,750, selling to an

out-of-state dealer. "The Little Fisherman," an oil on panel, sold to a

Continental buyer on the phone. An Alice B. Chittenden still life, an oil on

canvas estimated at $1,5/2,500, reached $4,400; and "Monterey Nocturnal," an

oil on canvas by Charles Rollo Peters, went just over estimate for $5,500.

Scottie Fitzgerald, the daughter of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, consigned a

Jean Dufy watercolor, which sold within estimate at $6,000. A Stickley

Brothers flip-top games table, #1494, went at $1,800. A finely detailed hand

painted Nineteenth Century ivory fan with cameo portraits and a painting of a

ship sold to the floor for $1,400. A miniature giltwood settee, Nineteenth

Century, doubled its high estimate, selling at $1,550.

Prices quoted do not reflect a ten percent buyer's premium.