The 2013 Winter Antiques Show

Congratulations New York City! this years 2013 Winter Antiques Show, held at your very own Park Avenue Armory, will be featuring items from Newport's famed Preservation Society mansions. Items from the following mansions: The Elms, Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff, Chateau Sur Mer, Hunter House, Chepstow and Kingscote will be there. If I were you, I would go, but I don't live in New York City! 



Slab table. Attributed to John Goddard, Newport, ca.1755. 42 ¼ in. x 20 in. x 28 7/8 in. Mahogany and marble. Hunter House. 

Attributed to John Goddard (1724-1785), this serpentine form marble slab table was made circa 1755. Goddard was the foremost practitioner of the serpentine style, and his pieces were popular in Newport. The front legs terminate in boldly carved ball and claw feet, the rear talons of which have the distinctive extra knuckle favored by John Goddard.






Dr. William Hunter’s Spaniels. Gilbert Stuart, Newport, ca. 1770. 30 ¾ in. x 35 ¾ in. Oil on canvas. Hunter House.
One of his earliest recorded works, this oil on canvas painting was created by Gilbert Stuart around the year 1770. It depicts two spaniels resting beneath a serpentine tea table. Stuart is recognized as one of the foremost portrait painters of the late 18^thand early 19^th centuries.







Mrs. Elizabeth Drexel Lehr (later Lady Decies). Giovanni Boldini, Paris, 1905. 46 in. x 86 in. Oil on canvas. The Elms.

This full length portrait of Mrs. Harry (Elizabeth Drexel) Lehr was executed in Paris in 1905 by the artist Giovanni Boldini. Born Elizabeth Wharton Drexel, she was the daughter of Joseph William Drexel, partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, and Lucy Smith Wharton. She married Joseph Vinton Dahlgren in 1889 and following his death, married Harry Symes Lehr in 1901. In her autobiography King Lehr and the Gilded Age (1935), Mrs. Lehr describes how her new husband revealed on their wedding night that theirs was to be a marriage in name only, and that he was only interested in her money. In 1943, Lady Decies was immortalized in a photograph by Weegee, entitled “the Critic,” depicting her with Mrs. G.W. Kavanaugh, in formal dress and diamond tiaras at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera, while a homeless woman looks on.

Centerpiece.  Paul Storr, England, 1822-1823. 43 in. Silver. Marble House. 

This silver centerpiece entitled The Judgment of Paris was made by renowned English silversmith Paul Storr for the Baron Henrique Teixeira de Sampaio of Lisbon, Portugal.  Storr worked in the neoclassical style and created everything from simple tableware to large scale sculptural pieces.

Vases. John Bennett, England, ca. 1880.  Kingscote.   

Ceramicist John Bennett was instrumental in bringing a taste for Aesthetic Movement ceramics from Great Britain to America.  Bennett’s style and choice of subject matter – flowers, birds and fruits stylized into flat, two-dimensional patterns – had much in common with Japanese prints and works by British designers such as William Morris.

Caryatid. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, American, 1913. 5 ½ in. x 5 ½ in. x 22 ¾ in. Bronze. The Breakers. 

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney created this bronze statuette of a male figure in 1913; it is one of six studies made for the Three Graces fountain at McGill University in Montreal. This cast was displayed in an early Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney exhibition at the Newport Art Association in 1916. Two of the other statuettes are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.