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- Written by: Ken Furtado
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On Nov. 26 I wrote about two figurines sold at a recent online auction. At first glance, they appeared to be Siesta and Narcissus. On closer inspection, however, they reminded me of what happens to my cookies when I use too much baking powder: they get a bloated and puffy look. I concluded that these were fakes.
To be fair to Live Auctioneers, the auction house, the figurines were not identified as being from the Quaintance Studio, and the names Siesta and Narcissus were not used in the description.
Now we have a different circumstance: two lots offered at auction online by the same auction house were not produced by the Quaintance studio, but this time the name of Quaintance was invoked. The auction was held Nov. 30.
My blog entry, "Bronze," (Dec. 2016) was about five Quaintance figurines that were cast in bronze. The castings were not produced by the Quaintance Studio, nor with permission from the Quaintance estate. They are meticulously accurate reproductions of Narcissus and the four male swimmers from the Neptune's Children suite.
Only 100 such bronze castings were made — 20 of each. Apart from a bronze Narcissus sold on eBay in 2016, I have never seen one come up for auction or be offered for sale. But there they were, all 5. The auction listing described them as "Quaintance Vintage."
Here's the complete description for Narcissus: "George Quaintance Vintage Solid Bronze Narcissus Nude Male Statue Signed Sculpture Underside Copyright. Signed indistinctly. This subject is discussed by Ken Furtado on the artists GeorgeQuaintance Dot Com website." (Thank you for the acknowledgement.)
And here's the complete description for the swimmers, which were sold as a single lot: "Set 4 George Quaintance Male Nude Athlete Diver Swimming Wall Statue Sculpture Relief Bronzes."
The winning bid for Narcissus was $1000. The winning bid for the swimmers was $2200.
Several questions come to mind when considering whether to purchase lots such as the ones above. What is the motive for buying art? Is it to collect a particular artist regardless of investment value? Is it because the buyer admires the art, regardless of the artist? Or does the purchase represent an investment? More than one answer is possible, and different pieces of art might elicit different responses.
Thank you once more to A, whose keen eye keeps me aware of Quaintance items on the auction scene.
Changing the subject, my Aug. 18, 2024 blog said I would report on the results of the Aug. 22 auction by Swann Galleries of the lithographs Siesta and Preludio. The pre-auction estimate was $1000 to $1500 each. Siesta, which was signed, sold for $1100; Preludio, which was not signed, fetched $900.
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Examples abound of paintings, photographs, or sculptures whose owners claimed they were from the Quaintance Studio, but they were not. Here's an odd variation on that: two sculptures that do not claim to be from the Quaintance Studio, but whose owner(s) might hope you think otherwise.
In September, this pair of figurines was offered at online auction as a single lot. Potential buyers familiar with the sculptures of George Quaintance may have thought they were looking at examples of Narcissus and Siesta. Yet the listing stated "Artist Unknown" and it did not name the individual pieces.
The auction house, Live Auctioneers, has handled enough works by Quaintance that it's unlikely they would overlook having two Quaintance pieces in their auction. Why, then, not identify the artist or the pieces?
Unless Quaintance was not the artist.
A careful examination of the images posted on the auction website could lead one to suspect — as did the writer who brought these to my attention — that they were clumsily executed forgeries, or to be more charitable, "homages" to Quaintance. The details of the sculptures are not sharp, and if you have examples, or photos, of Narcissus and Siesta for comparison, there are numerous discrepancies to note.
The lot description is brief. It refers to a repaired break below the left leg of Narcissus, but makes no mention of the substantial crack in the right shoulder of Siesta. The description in its entirety reads as follows:
[ART]. [Artist Unknown]. Pair of Small Plaster Statuettes. [N.p., n.d., ca. late 20th century]. Plaster statues of handsome men, one completely nude, the other just wearing pants. Sizes range from 9" high to 7 1/2" high. Some wear, soiling scuffing, statuette of nude man with a repaired break at the base near the figure's extended leg.
The estimate was $200-$400. Bidding opened at $100 and the winning bidder paid $550, not including tax, buyer premium or shipping. Maybe the buyer thought (s)he'd found a great bargain.
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A reader in France discovered these two videos on a site called Dailymotion, which appears to be very similar to the US site, Instagram. They were posted in 2013 by a fellow calling himself swimguynunu. I am not a user of Dailymotion, so I can’t provide any information about swimguy, and his videos offer no clues.
Swimguy has created two video montages of paintings by George Quaintance, and set them to music. Links are provided, if you want to check them out.
Cowboy Bathers (about 5 minutes)
Please send an email if you can add any info about swimguynunu, or if you are swimguy!
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In 2023, several Quaintance lithographs and an early oil painting appeared at auction.
The oil painting was offered in August: a signed canvas of a voluptuous, provocatively posed female nude, titled Summer's Day. The painting measures 24 by 24 inches and, according to the listing, is inscribed on the stretcher.
The January 1939 issue of the Chicago-based Picture and Gift Journal contained an article about Quaintance that claimed, "George Quaintance is the originator of the 'glamour nudes,' who have all it takes to knock 'em dead from San Diego to Bangor, from Miami to Seattle."
Today, Quaintance fans might wonder what he was talking about. The nudes for which Quaintance is remembered are male nudes, and if there was a body of work of female glamour nudes renowned from coast to coast in 1939, it is now largely forgotten.
Summer's Day sold at auction previously, in 2007, for $4,000. That listing gave the painting's date as 1940. The 2023 auction did not mention a date. The painting sold for $3,000, far below the pre-auction estimate of $4,000 to $6,000.
Then came the lithographs, many of which are becoming increasingly hard-to-find. Nine Quaintance paintings were reproduced as full-color lithographs during his lifetime. At one time, the entire suite could be purchased from the studio for $25!
An October auction offered a copy of the Siesta lithograph and, separately, a set of four beautifully framed lithographs of Rodeo Victor, Bacchant, Baths of Ancient Rome and Spartan Soldiers Bathing.
Siesta sold for $425 against a pre-auction estimate of $300-$500. Along with Preludio, it is the largest of the Quaintance Studio lithographs, measuring 17.5 by 22.5 inches. But it is not especially scarce. Copies pop up regularly on eBay and at auction. On Aug. 22, 2024 (may be past tense when you read this), examples of both Siesta and Preludio will be auctioned by the Swann Galleries. For this go-around, the pre-auction estimate is $1000-$1500 each.
The other four above-mentioned lithographs are much scarcer. Print size is 11 by 14 inches for Rodeo Victor and Bacchant, or 14 by 11 inches for Baths of Ancient Rome and Spartan Soldiers Bathing. They could once be purchased as a set for $9. At this auction, they sold as a single lot for $1,000, dwarfing the pre-auction estimate of $200-$300.
I will be writing more about Quaintance's lithographs in a future entry, and will also report on the 8.22.2024 auction results at that time.
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Three books have been published about George Quaintance, not counting the 2014 ebook.
The first — although not chronologically — is a version of the biography I co-authored with John Waybright. In the end stages of John's life, in 2013, a friend of his paid to have about 20 paperback copies of our book privately printed. It was to be a birthday surprise for John. The finished book was about 6x9 inches, 142 pages, and had several glossy plates, some of which were in full color.
That friend's accomplice, however, acquired an early, uncorrected and incomplete version of the manuscript. John passed away before he saw it, or knew about it. (Thank goodness!) I have a copy and I hope that no one else does.
The second book, The Art of George Quaintance, appeared in three editions, all with different covers and slightly different contents.
In 1989, Volker Janssen of Janssen Verlag (Publishers) published The Art of George Quaintance in an edition of 1000 copies. It has a pale blue cover featuring Spartan Soldiers Bathing. The text is in German. At that time, Janssen owned several works by Quaintance, so he exhibited them at his gallery in Berlin. Hoping to sidestep any possible copyright issues with the Quaintance estate, he used that exhibition as a pretext for including photos in the book of every one of Quaintance's known paintings of the male physique era.
As Janssen explained in an email to me, "I had the opportunity to purchase some rare original Quaintance paintings and photographs, and as a result the first Quaintance exhibition finally took place in Berlin, in 1989. The first book of his work, The Art of George Quaintance, was published, and it became the catalogue for the show."
In cooperation with the publishing house Bruno Gmünder, a second edition of 2,000 copies of The Art of George Quaintance was printed in 1990. It has a yellow cover with the image of the kneeling boy hugging a donkey that also appeared on the cover of Physique Pictorial and as a greeting card.
A third and final edition was printed in 2003. It has a full-color cover depicting Sunrise, an original canvas that Janssen owned at the time, on the front cover. One thousand copies were printed. All three editions were oversized (9x12 inches) paperbacks; there were no hardcover editions.
The third Quaintance book is the full-color, hardcover, coffee-table book, Quaintance, published by Taschen in 2010. I wrote the descriptions and commentaries for the paintings in that book. Today, copies in good condition routinely sell for many times the original price of $100. There was only the single edition and the number of copies printed is a trade secret.
What's curious are the extremely high prices being asked for the Janssen books at booksellers and online sources (e.g., Amazon and eBay). All three Janssen editions are not particularly scarce, and copies are not hard to find. Are buyers and sellers confusing the Taschen book with the Janssen book? Sellers routinely interchange the titles: you may see the Taschen book called The Art of George Quaintance and the Janssen book referred to as George Quaintance or Quaintance. Just recently I located a copy of the Taschen volume offered for $100 and a 2nd edition of the Janssen book offered for $625! Happy hunting.
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An unusual photograph from Quaintance's male physique period sold on eBay, April 18, 2024. The title was "Trail (sic) by Combat Men Knife Fighting Art Picture Quaintance."
The photograph was an original black and white photo of the canvas Trial by Combat. Online images showed the correct studio imprint and other information. It was typical of the thousands of black and white photographs produced by the Quaintance Studio in its heyday, measuring about 8x10 inches and printed on heavy stock. Slight age discoloration and some rippled edges added bona fides.
But lo, the two central figures — and a murderous looking yucca — are in vivid color. The listing gives no explanation for this, nor does it indicate whether the seller knew this was an oddball item.
The photo sold for $50.
This is not the first instance I've seen of the Studio's b&w photos with color added, but this is the first that added color selectively, rather than to the entire image, and the first to use vivid non-watercolor ink or paint. Other colorized images used watercolors in pastel washes that sometimes bled into the margins, such as this example of Morning.
The burning question is: who added the color? It seems that new ways of misusing and abusing the Quaintance estate continue to emerge. According to US copyright law, works created after 1923, but before 1978, are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. Enforcement, however, requires that someone is minding the store.
Everything on this website is free. If you enjoy reading these articles, please consider making a donation to help defray the costs of hosting and domain registration. The "Donate" button will get you started. Thank you.