Rare Hudson River School Paintings Discovered in Larchmont

One of the most anticipated moments of the television show “Antiques Roadshow” is when participants come to learn that their dust-covered garage sale find or inherited household item is worth many multiples of what was originally paid for it.

A similar plot unfolded on March 5, when a Cortlandt Manor couple, who asked not to be identified, brought two paintings that they had recently inherited to an “Antiques Appraisal Day” event sponsored by the Larchmont Historical Society (LHS) and Clarke Auction Gallery.

Both paintings appeared to be signed by Jasper F. Cropsey, a 19th Century landscape painter of the Hudson River School. Cropsey's paintings have appeared in major museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.  

When David Bahssin, co-owner of Post Road Gallery and one of the expert appraisers at the event, initially saw the couple’s paintings he was dubious, given the fact that the paintings were a pair and appeared to have been completed late in the artist’s career.

“They were painted well after the artist’s prime period,” he said. “That confused me.”

Clarke Auction Gallery Owner Ron Clarke, an eternal optimist, then viewed the paintings himself and, recognizing the quality and potential value, “decided to pursue further.”

The Cropsey paintings had all the dust and dirt of many years on them, having spent several decades hovering over a ping-pong table in the owner’s childhood home in West Hartford, Connecticut.

“It’s a sign that they haven’t been seen in public for 150 years,” said Clarke Appraiser Tom Curran, referring to the original, untouched condition of the works.

Bahssin recommended that the gallery contact the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, a Hastings-on-Hudson-based organization that is the foremost authority on the work of Cropsey to further authenticate the pieces. 

It was a bit of a hard sell, confessed Clarke, but eventually the Foundation agreed to look at both paintings in person.

“Finally, something struck a chord with the art historian there,” said Nelia Moore, an appraiser at Clarke who presented the paintings in person to the Foundation. Three weeks later, the paintings were identified as Cropsey works titled “Autumn in America” and “Prospect Point Niagara Falls in Winter.”

A call for comment to the Foundation was not returned.

Clarke Gallery will auction off both paintings this Sunday, May 15, with bidding conservatively estimated to start between $40,000-$60,000 for each painting, a fair amount greater than the $250 the clean-out service the couple hired was offering to take the artworks off their hands.

“This is the stuff of legend,” said Curran.

“I’m ecstatic that it walked in here and that the people were confident to give it to us,” said Clarke.

This was the second , and the first one with Larchmont’s Clarke Auction Gallery, which relocated to a large space on the Boston Post Road last September. The first event was two years ago when over 80 people brought their treasures to be appraised by a panel of experts.

Clarke—a former Dubliner who freely admits he lived as an illegal immigrant for eight years after he arrived on U.S. soil in 1987—previously owned three antique shops, two located on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx and one in Queens. He opened Clarke Auction Gallery in 1998.  Clarke’s father—an art collector/architect who designed airports in Ireland—spurred his interest in art and antiques.

Unlike larger auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, explains Clarke, the Larchmont gallery is unassuming in manner with an open-door policy of sorts, offering free appraisals to people coming in with items for auction.  Sales are kept private and auction records are not published.

Although, no one can predict the outcome of Sunday’s auction, previous auctions have shown that initial estimates can be staggeringly low compared to the eventual hammer price.  In 2009, a painting by Beuford Delaney titled, “Spring Street,” blew past the pre-auction estimate of $30,000-$50,000 when it sold for $176,250, setting a world record for the artist, said Curran.