This landscape by George Hetzel, the leader of southwestern Pennsylvania's Scalp Level School, will be sold at Alderfer's.
An oil painting by the leader of the Scalp Level School, a southwestern Pennsylvania art colony that predated the Brandywine and Bucks County impressionists, will be for sale this afternoon.
Alderfer Auction and Appraisal's sale in Hatfield will offer 200 lots of American and European paintings, including the oil by George Hetzel, probably the best-known artist southwestern Pennsylvania had produced until the advent of Andy Warhol. The Scalp Level School took its name from its location, a once bucolic town southeast of Johnstown where around 1830 an art gallery opened that became a nucleus for area artists.
At the opening of a 1998 exhibition at the Governor's Mansion in Harrisburg titled "The Scalp Level Tradition," Paul Chew, director emeritus of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, explained that the name originated among farmers in the area who, wishing to have more land for crops, told foresters "to scalp the land level."
Hetzel was born in 1826 in the French region of Alsace, and died in 1906 in Pittsburgh, where his family had moved when he was 2 years old. Apprenticed as a boy to a house and sign painter, he became a muralist for local riverboats, cafes, and a penitentiary, according to a biography from the online archives of AskART. After studying art at Germany's Duesseldorf Academy, Hetzel returned in 1850 to the United States, where his formal style was influenced by the Barbizon school, later identified with the coming of impressionism.
He discovered Scalp Level on a fishing trip there in 1866 and persuaded colleagues at the Pittsburgh School of Design for Women, where he taught, to accompany him on a painting expedition to the area the next summer. Hetzel, along with brothers William Coventry Wall and Alfred S. Wall, was part of the first generation of landscape artists who painted there.
Scalp Level's artistic appeal ended in 1905 when the Berwind-White Coal Co. moved into the region and opened Eureka Mine 40. Meanwhile, Hetzel exhibited widely, including in New York and in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
The painting Alderfer will offer today, a forest landscape by a river's edge, is signed and dated 1893 and has a presale estimate of $10,000 to $15,000, according to its description in the ArtFactLive catalog for the online portion of today's auction. This afternoon's session, beginning at 4 p.m., is the final session of Alderfer's two day-sale, which was to begin yesterday with jewelry, furniture, and decorative arts and resumes at 11 a.m. today with a 400-lot sale of discovery art.
Other major lots in the online session include Guy Wiggins' Snow Storm at the Wall Street ($15,000 to $20,000), Herman O. Herzog's The Engelhorner Near Rosenlani Switzerland ($20,000 to $30,000), and Walter E. Baum's Snow Covered Road ($20,000 to $30,000).
Preview is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today. For further information, call 215-393-3003 or go to www.alderferauction.com.
Slosberg quality auction. Paintings by a local African American artist and a single-lot collection of sports memorabilia will be highlighted Sunday and Monday at Barry S. Slosberg Inc.'s two-day "quality sale" at the gallery, 2501 E. Ontario St. in Port Richmond.
The African American artist is Frank Dillon, an early-to-mid-20th-century painter who did most of his work in Burlington County, much of it being kept by his family. Two of his works, a painting dated 1941 depicting what appears to be a displaced family in war-torn Europe and a watercolor of a sleeping cat, will be among the 450 lots in the Sunday session, beginning at 10 a.m.
Slosberg associate Rob Goldstein expects the painting to bring $1,500 to $2,500 and the watercolor to be sold in the mid-three-figure range. The top presale estimate, $4,000 to $6,000, is for a depiction of peasant girls in central Italy's Campagna region by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes.
Sunday's session also features four artworks by Paul Gorka and, among the furniture, an unusual Eastlake refrigerator that Goldstein calls "more decorative than functional." It should sell in the three-figure range.
The single-owner, single-lot collection of sports memorabilia will be offered at Monday's session, beginning at 5 p.m. Consisting of trophies, photographs, and a bronze, it comes from the estate of Roberta "Bobbie" Ranck Bonniwell, known for her promotion of women in gymnastics from the 1920s to the 1940s and the first woman to be inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. Goldstein expects the lot to bring up to $1,500, with the bronze alone worth $600 to $800.
Previews: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. today, 9 a.m. to sale time Sunday, and 3 p.m. to sale time Monday. For further information, call 215-725-4030.
T-Bird at Briggs. A classic 1956 convertible Ford Thunderbird, complete with tail fins, will be a highlight of Briggs Auction's multi-estate auction beginning at 5 p.m. next Friday at the gallery at 1347 Naamans Creek Rd. (Rte. 491), Garnet Valley. The car, with 25,586 miles on it and in good running order, comes from an estate in Seaside Park, N.J., where it used to appear in local parades and other events.
Briggs president John Turner expects it to bring $10,000 to $15,000.
The auction also features a collection of Americana, including an assortment of Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur, watercolors, and bookplates. One of the Fraktur, dated 1799, depicts bright red tulips and a wreath of flowers surrounding the writing; the other, a birth and baptismal certificate, is dated 1831 and features colorful parrots around a heart-shaped motif. Also in the Americana collection is a whimsical five-inch carved poodle figure by Pennsylvania carver Wilhelm Schimmel.
Preview is from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to sale time Friday. For further information, call 610-485-0412.
Contact David Iams at daiams@comcast.net.
