Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, Thomaston, Maine
Photos courtesy Thomaston Place Auction Galleries
It was another three days of “Summer Splendor” at Thomaston Auction Galleries, Thomaston, Maine, June 26-28. Of about 1460 lots offered, only about 210 misfired, with some of those being sold after the auction. But there were plenty of five-figure winners to take up the slack.
The catalog gave an informative description of a portrait of Hannah Rhea Caldwell (1767-1825) by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). Hannah was the daughter of Presbyterian minister James Caldwell (1734-1781), whose wife, also named Hannah, was shot and killed by a British light infantryman during the Battle of Connecticut Farms, in what is now Union, New Jersey. Ninety-three years later, poet Bret Harte composed the poem “Caldwell of Springfield,” writing “All the Jerseys aflame! And they gave him the name / Of the ‘rebel high priest.’ He stuck in their gorge, / For he loved the Lord God—and he hated King George!” Caldwell himself was killed by a sentry in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, when he refused to have a package he was carrying inspected. The sentry was hanged for murder on suspicion that he had been bribed to kill the reverend. Caldwell became known as the “Fighting Parson” and has several towns and schools in New Jersey named in his honor. His nine surviving orphaned children, including young Hannah, were raised by family friends. The unsigned 28½" x 23½" (sight size) oil on a cradled mahogany panel came with an early typewritten label affixed to the back, tracing the provenance to the family of George Putnam in 1929. It became one of the sale’s leaders at $25,200 (including buyer’s premium) with a $10,000/20,000 estimate.
Sylvester Churchill (1783-1862) was a journalist and publisher of The Vermont Republican weekly newspaper, prior to his military service in the War of 1812, the Creek War, the Mexican American War, and the American Civil War. An Ames Cabotville sword, was presented to him for his actions at the Battle of Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847. There, he led troops against General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in an engagement in which he lost 80 men, had his horse shot three times, and had the reins shot from his hands. The sword sold for $9000 with a $3000/5000 estimate. In a separate lot, Churchill’s militaria, including his bicorn field hat, a gold cloth sash, his gold cord field epaulets, shoe buckles, and several other items took in $10,800, easily passing the $1000/1500 expectation.
A rare Louis Vuitton malle à fleurs or “flower trunk” rose from the obscurity of a $2000/3000 estimate to lead all non-jewelry lots in the three-day sale, finally closing at $32,400. Introduced around 1910, these were not travel trunks, but gift trunks designed to hold floral arrangements for the brand’s most prestigious clients. Gaston-Louis Vuitton had a strict “no discounts” policy, even for Vuitton’s most favored customers, and these were offered as rewards to loyal customers. This one bore the Vuitton imprint in at least three places, including the interior, the lock, and the leather handle, along with serial number “788784.”
For more information, visit the website (www.thomastonauction.com) or call (207) 354-8141.
These two oil on canvas portraits are unsigned, but are listed in the catalog as by Joseph Whiting Stock (1815-1855). Each has some noticeable damage, with a repair behind the gentleman’s ear and a long scratch beside the woman. The pair sold for $11,400, with a $10,000/15,000 estimate. According to the listing, Stock painted nearly 1000 portraits as recorded in his journal, of which there are about 100 extant. Presumably the attribution came from his writings.
Howard Logan Hildebrandt (1872-1958) was a Pennsylvania artist best known for his portraits of prominent women, often rendered in a lush garden setting. Woman in White, 32" x 28" (sight size), oil on canvas, of an unidentified sitter, circa 1905, signed lower right, made $3300 (est. $3000/5000).
The top lot of all was a 16" long, graduated natural pearl necklace, with 57 light cream pearls, and an 18k white gold clasp set with a diamond-shaped emerald. Marked “YARD INC.” for New York City jewelry house Raymond C. Yard, Inc., the final price was $39,000, obliterating the $7000/9000 estimate.
According to Delaney Antique Clocks, Samuel Ranlet moved to Augusta, Maine, in 1800, where he is believed to have served an apprenticeship under Benjamin Snow. He settled in Monmouth, Maine, in 1809, where he built clocks until his death in 1860. This Ranlet tall clock, 98" high, signed on the face “Samuel Ranlet / Monmouth,” has a case of Philippine mahogany, a filigree bonnet with solid brass finials, a moon phase and warship dial in the tombstone arch, and a signed original watercolor silhouette of Captain Samuel Ranlet framed inside the throat door. But for all that, it sold below the $10,000/15,000 estimate for $6000.
This 12¾" x 15¼" x 1½" oval ceramic plate, hand-painted by Russian/American artist Marc Chagall, signed along the lower edge, and also signed and dated on the reverse “Marc / Chagall / 1951,” carried the imprint of the Madoura pottery studio, run by Suzanne and Georges Ramié. With some professional restoration, it still blew past the $5000/10,000 estimate and settled in at $27,600.
This Dahlov Ipcar (1917-2017) opus, a soft stuffed fabric wildebeest, in a pastel rainbow of stripes, with Ipcar’s name stitched into the belly, came on strong. It leaped past the $1000/1500 estimate and ended at $9000.
This 11½" x 9½" (sight size) oil on canvas of an unidentified seated nude woman, in an ornate replica Aesthetic period frame, by Pennsylvania artist and sculptor Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (1844-1916), signed lower left, sold for $14,400 (est. $8000/12,000).
Gilbert Stuart oil on cradled mahogany board portrait of Hannah Rhea Caldwell, circa 1807, sold for $25,200 (est. $10,000/20,000).
Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-1872), formerly identified as Robert Scott Duncanson, became one of the first 19th-century black artists to achieve national and international prominence. According to the catalog listing, this 12" x 14" (stretcher size) oil on canvas landscape titled Twilight, is one of his earliest known works, circa 1849, reflecting a romanticized Hudson River style. Professionally cleaned, restored, and in-painted, it sold for $30,000 (est. $30,000/50,000).
This 23½" x 47½" (sight size) oil on academy board by Antonio Jacobsen (1850-1921) of the SS Evangeline brought $3600 (est. $5000/7000). The ship was built in the Clyde, Scotland, in 1912 for the Canada Atlantic Plant Steamship Company, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and sailed as a passenger/cargo steamer from about 1902 to 1932. Jacobsen is known to have painted at least five portraits of the ship between 1913 and 1915.
This 34½" x 30½" (sight size) oil on canvas of a young woman in a lush setting with a dark landscape and maritime background is unsigned on the front, but inscribed on the reverse “Paint[ed] / By Wm. M. Prior / Dec 1839,” indicating William Matthew Prior (1806-1873). With a $2000/3000 estimate, it sold for $7800. It was from the collection of Peggy McClard and Randy Segotta.
A late 19th-century safe by C. Herring & Co., New York City, concealed in a Renaissance Revival-style walnut cabinet, proved a major hit when it eclipsed the $1000/1500 estimate and landed at $16,800, aided by a combination that still worked.
An unsigned watercolor of the man himself, Brigadier General Sylvester Churchill, preserved in a later unhinged bifold daguerreotype frame from the studio of New York photographer Jeremiah Gurney, easily sailed past the $700/900 estimate and sold for $3900.
Dahlov Ipcar (1917-2017) titled this oil on Belgian linen painting Tsavo Nyika, meaning the Tsavo Wilderness, when she produced it in 1991 and offered it for $3000. Here the price on the 19¾" x 23¾" (sight size) work blossomed to $22,800, squarely within the $15,000/25,000 estimate.
Originally published in the October 2026 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2026 Maine Antique Digest
