ONLINE-ONLY Art Design & Asian Auction ONLINE-ONLY PREVIEW No Activity at Livingston Ave this Sale

Upstate NY, Long Island, Palm Beach & Las Vegas Estate Finds Lead Our April 30 Online-Only Auction

Richard Stedman Estate Services LLC is an upstate New York-founded firm that operates a Lake Worth gallery and a Tampa Bay auction and estate sale company in Florida. In 1997 we had our first of many Westchester events at the former Rudy's Beau Rivage, 19 Livingston Avenue, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 however since the historic Windows on the Hudson landmark was razed we have been searching for a new Greater New York location and as a result there will be no activity at our Livingston Ave. location for this event. Preview is online-only with condition reports posted for all items. 

In the interim our sales and previews are being conducted as online-only, hosted by our Las Vegas office. Ten lots, Lot 60-Lot 69, including furniture, one sculpture and a vintage bicycle ship or are available for pick-up further upstate in Binghamton while the rest of the items ship from our national warehouses or are warehoused in the South - please see shipping details in each item's online posting. We look forward to resuming live auctions in Greater New York in the near future. The online-only auction begins Saturday, April 30th at 9am PacificTime/12noon EasternTime. Exclusively hosted by LiveAuctioneers, it will be a timed event featuring both advance and real-time bidding.

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Somewhat of a boutique sale comprising 75 lots, it showcases the breadth of material the second-generation firm encounters at their various family-run locations: Three old masters, over a dozen 19th & 20th century paintings, half a dozen modern and contemporary oils and original works on paper, a dozen original illustrations, five lots of post-War graphics, Art Deco, Moderne and Pop sculptures, turn of the century, pre- and post-War lighting as well as jewelry, silver, watch, book, Judaica, art glass and studio pottery examples. Seventeen Asian category offerings and seven furniture lots round out the catalogue.

The cover item, Lot 57, is an atmospheric Howard Russell Butler oil of a woman in an illuminated Japanese garden. It was purchased in Ohio over twenty years ago and resurfaced in a Florisa retirement community (Est. $3000/5000). Related period works include a Benjamin Champney winter oil (Lot 59, Est. $1500/2500) and a Paul King view of a Brittany Harbor with his Stony Brook, Long Island address on the reverse (Lot 58, Est. $1500/2500).

Fresh from a Palm Beach estate is a 17th century Italianate landscape with figures in a village whose most recent hundred years of yellowed varnish throughout the sky reveals in light surface scratches a vibrant blue cloudscape hiding underneath and awaiting conservation (Lot 31, Est. $2000/4000). Considerable intrigue surrounds Lot 17 (Est. $2000/4000), a large 17th century cradled panel painting of Vertumnus and Pomona wherein the elder visitor of a maiden resting before her gathered fruits may not be whom she appears - but we won't give away the legend's ending! It comes from the sale of a noted Central Florida collection.

Every auction needs a monolith and this sale won't disappoint - it's so heavy it wasn't moved to Nevada and can be picked up on the East Coast...the seldom seen but often discussed in collector circles Norman Rockwell Four Freedoms solid cherry secretary desk. A massive American-made 1994 commemorative by the Stanley furniture company featuring the artist's iconic "Four Freedoms" WWII posters and "Saturday Evening Post" covers reproduced in panel size across the front, together with an artist's plaque, an owner's plaque, the surviving original certificate and build sheet and even the original key. Very few have come to the market: Lot 36, Est. $1500/3000.

Two Baltimore interest finds, both from the auction gallery owner's travels between NY & FL discovered at separate sale locations within walking distance of I-95, are hoped to garner Maryland and Mid-Atlantic interest. An exceptionally large 27" x 26" schoolgirl needlepoint sampler features a large architectural center of a church that staff research strongly suggests is St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Though considerably browned since its 1838 weaving, the historial potential is considerable (Lot 13, Est. $1000/2000). On the miniature side, a 19th century silhouette portrait painting attributed to Ms. Hariet McKennon of the Hotel Rennert, Lot 38, carries a $200/400 estimate. From nearby Berks County, PA is a scarce E. S. Reeser 1915 genre painting with seniors seated before an antiques-appointed hearth in Windsor and spindle chairs discussing political headlines (Lot 39, Est. $2000/4000).

Three of the more interesting Las Vegas discoveries are two Chilean 1961 abstract oils from Fernando Torterolo's avant-garde Surrealist period (Lots 51 & 52, Est. $750/1500 each) and a Taos school mystery portrait of a Native American elder signed distinctly but illegibly dating to sometime after WWII in the cowboy artist and plein air Southwestern tradition (Lot 56, $600/900). Opportunity for the art sleuth abounds, as there are seven illegibly signed paintings by unknown artists, spanning several hundred years and several continents.

Two specific collections are featured in 10 and 11 lot mini-sessions, the first being original illustrations from the archives of Long Island, NY collector plate publisher RECO International. Several artists also were featured on the Bradford Exchange and their plate designs count amongst the most widely circulated limited edition graphic collectibles of the 1970's and '80's. Artists represented include Sandra Kuck, Gari Katz, Dot & Sy Barlowe, Ingelaus Drechsler and Brad Brown, whose tondo vignette "Loving Time" featuring an African American father and daughter is one of his best known works (Lots 40-50, Est. $350/700 each).

This season 2016 marks the Stedman family's 20th Anniversary of holding catalogued auctions managed by their son, R. V. Stedman, first in upstate NY, then as Florida Auction Business AB3569 (as well as in Nevada where online sales are based). Dick and Joyce however founded the company 59 years ago in upstate New York and family friends, colleagues and relatives still turn up fresh estate material there on a regular basis. Lots 60-69 are being sold from near Binghamton in Broome County and feature period natural patina wicker, cast and wrought iron seating and lighting as well as three items that speak to the changing tastes of the industry - a vintage Schwinn banana seat bicycle in violet (Lot 60, Est. $200/400), an over-the-top spun Mid-century Modern fiberglass shade faux tree floorlamp (Lot 69, Est. $600/1200) that looks as though it stepped right out of a Palm Springs movie set and for good measure a Sergio Bustamante papier mache' owl Pop Art sculpture (Lot 68, Est. $200/400).

Besides vintage and contemporary interest dominating much of today's headlines, Asian arts - Chinese in particular - have been equally hot at the Stedman's Florida estate sales and Dixie Highway retail location in Lake Worth. A special effort has been made to have a quarter of the Las Vegas auction's lots be of Asian interest this time around. There's a labeled Qianlong watercolor landscape (Lot 28, Est. $500/1000) with an early C. T. Loo gallery stamp, perhaps the most influential Chinese dealer in Paris and New York in the first half of the 20th century, an antique Tibetan thangka (Lot 26, Est. $1000/2000), a large figural Ming guardian roof tile (Lot 54, Est. $400/800), a boxed Qing carved soapstone boulder (Lot 55, Est. $300/500), a variety of Chinese and Japanese ceramics, equally monumental Qing wood carving (Lot 24, est. $1000/2000) and alabaster Gu form lamp (Lot 23, Est. $500/1000) examples, a Japanese silver gilt etched Showa plaque (Lot 25, Est. $150/300) and two large colored etchings by Malaysian artist Eng Tay (Lots 5 & 6, Est. $200/400 each). Of cross-cultural interest in addition to the cover lot Japanese garden composition by Butler (above) is a rare appearance at auction of an Art Deco watercolor of a figure on the Great Wall of China by New York illustrator William Llowyn Longyear in period silvery 1920's tonalities (Lot 22, Est. $500/$1000) as well as a circa late 1950's Ynez Johnston colored etching (Lot 74, Est. $250/500) in her characteristic totemic abstract vocabulary channelling Mogul, Tibetan, Pre-Columbian and Persian influences as a Berkely and San Franciso, California artist sometimes referenced in the context of Paul Klee and Mark Tobey.

R. V. Stedman cites his firm as the first auctioneer to advertise an online-only sale in "Antiques and the Arts Weekly" over nineteen years ago and since then has presented auctions on Sothebys.com, eBay, iCollector and now LiveAuctioneers. The best part of their company's timed, online-only sales from a buyer's perspective according to the Stedmans is that they feature no reserves above the starting bid, which is for this sale half of the low estimate for all of the above items. Since all bids are confidentially administated by LiveAuctioneers auction software, bidders are encouraged to sign-up early and advance bid at any time prior to the auction going live on Saturday morning of the 30th, or to join in the real-time bidding action starting at 9am Pacific or 12 noon Eastern. For more information contact sale manager R. V. Stedman at Richard Stedman Estate Services LLC's main number, 212.327.2616 or online at info@museumappraisers.com.