Feb 2008
A stunning portrait: Dorchester painting fetches $886,000 at auction
February 19, 2008
By Peter J. Howe
Globe Staff
It's the kind of find you might expect at an old-money home in Beacon Hill or Manchester-by-the-Sea or Nantucket, but probably not in working-class Dorchester.
A family-ancestor painting dating to approximately 1814 that had hung for more than a century on the parlor wall of a Savin Hill Victorian fetched a whopping $886,000 this month at a downtown auction house. The oil-on-panel painting of Edward Reed Dor
r is considered a gem of the "naive child
portrait" genre, depicting with rich detail a
6-year-old boy sitting on a chair with a dog leaning
into his lap and an orange, a symbol of wealth, in
his hand.
As the biggest neighborhood of Boston, encompassing close to one-quarter of the city, Dorchester is home to everything from upscale enclaves of fabulously restored Victorians to densely packed three-deckers to some of the Hub's poorest, most violent streets. It's not, however, a place where million-dollar antiquities turn up with regularity.
"We do from time to time have stories of beautiful, valuable items like this turning up in places where you wouldn't necessarily expect them, but not any as incredible as this that I can think of," said Chris Barber, a specialist in American furniture and decorative arts with Skinner Inc., the auction house that handled the sale. "This is why we deal with cold calls from prospective sellers so much. We never know what we're going to find."
The sale was first reported this week in the Dorchester Reporter weekly newspaper.
The sellers and the buyers have both asked Skinner to keep them anonymous. The house where city directories show that Dorr's son lived in the 1800s and where his descendants later lived is now a two-family house. A resident of one unit said she knew nothing about the sale and asked that her name not be published. The resident of the other unit could not be reached yesterday.
The subject of the painting, Dorr, lived from 1808 to 1880 and went on to be a tailor, apparently at a shop on Cornwall Street in Jamaica Plain. His son Edgar S. Dorr was chief engineer of the forerunner to today's Boston Water & Sewer Commission.
The portrait shows a blue-eyed boy in a formal green coat with a large Fauntleroy-style white shirt collar, sitting on a richly-detailed chair, with an orange tree behind him, an orange in his left hand, and his right hand patting the head of a gray dog stretching up to his lap. Skinner specialist Martha Hamilton determined from family records and information at the Dorchester Historical Society the subject and date of the portrait, but the painter's name couldn't be conclusively established.
Skinner originally estimated the painting would be worth around $50,000 at auction. But with the level of detail and the condition of the painting - it had never been retouched or removed from its original frame - 14 bidders battled to own it, bidding the final price up to $886,000. "It didn't seem to matter who the painter was," Barber said.
Skinner specialists said the Dorchester find reminded them of a sale they made of a Japanese scroll-top high board discovered several years ago at a home in a then-struggling part of Lowell. Skinner appraiser Steve Fletcher urged the 90-year-old owner to move the Japanese piece to safekeeping. "Why? It's been here since 1835," the man told him dismissively.
That piece went for $2 million.
James T. Brett - a former state representative from Dorchester who lives in Savin Hill and is now president of The New England Council, a leading regional business group - said that for all the bad press parts of his neighborhood get, "I'm not surprised at all" it turned out to be home to such a valuable work of art.
"It's a great neighborhood," Brett said. "Dorchester's a treasure."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
Globe Staff
It's the kind of find you might expect at an old-money home in Beacon Hill or Manchester-by-the-Sea or Nantucket, but probably not in working-class Dorchester.
A family-ancestor painting dating to approximately 1814 that had hung for more than a century on the parlor wall of a Savin Hill Victorian fetched a whopping $886,000 this month at a downtown auction house. The oil-on-panel painting of Edward Reed Dor
As the biggest neighborhood of Boston, encompassing close to one-quarter of the city, Dorchester is home to everything from upscale enclaves of fabulously restored Victorians to densely packed three-deckers to some of the Hub's poorest, most violent streets. It's not, however, a place where million-dollar antiquities turn up with regularity.
"We do from time to time have stories of beautiful, valuable items like this turning up in places where you wouldn't necessarily expect them, but not any as incredible as this that I can think of," said Chris Barber, a specialist in American furniture and decorative arts with Skinner Inc., the auction house that handled the sale. "This is why we deal with cold calls from prospective sellers so much. We never know what we're going to find."
The sale was first reported this week in the Dorchester Reporter weekly newspaper.
The sellers and the buyers have both asked Skinner to keep them anonymous. The house where city directories show that Dorr's son lived in the 1800s and where his descendants later lived is now a two-family house. A resident of one unit said she knew nothing about the sale and asked that her name not be published. The resident of the other unit could not be reached yesterday.
The subject of the painting, Dorr, lived from 1808 to 1880 and went on to be a tailor, apparently at a shop on Cornwall Street in Jamaica Plain. His son Edgar S. Dorr was chief engineer of the forerunner to today's Boston Water & Sewer Commission.
The portrait shows a blue-eyed boy in a formal green coat with a large Fauntleroy-style white shirt collar, sitting on a richly-detailed chair, with an orange tree behind him, an orange in his left hand, and his right hand patting the head of a gray dog stretching up to his lap. Skinner specialist Martha Hamilton determined from family records and information at the Dorchester Historical Society the subject and date of the portrait, but the painter's name couldn't be conclusively established.
Skinner originally estimated the painting would be worth around $50,000 at auction. But with the level of detail and the condition of the painting - it had never been retouched or removed from its original frame - 14 bidders battled to own it, bidding the final price up to $886,000. "It didn't seem to matter who the painter was," Barber said.
Skinner specialists said the Dorchester find reminded them of a sale they made of a Japanese scroll-top high board discovered several years ago at a home in a then-struggling part of Lowell. Skinner appraiser Steve Fletcher urged the 90-year-old owner to move the Japanese piece to safekeeping. "Why? It's been here since 1835," the man told him dismissively.
That piece went for $2 million.
James T. Brett - a former state representative from Dorchester who lives in Savin Hill and is now president of The New England Council, a leading regional business group - said that for all the bad press parts of his neighborhood get, "I'm not surprised at all" it turned out to be home to such a valuable work of art.
"It's a great neighborhood," Brett said. "Dorchester's a treasure."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
