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Lot Essay
GEORGE J. GOULD
Among the earliest published documentation for the Frederic Remington Gold Vase is an article published in The Railroad and Engineering Review on 12 October 1912. The article notes the “Directors of the Denver & Rio Grande R. R. have presented to George J. Gould a gold vase in testimonial of his long services with the road. Mr. Gould resigned as chairman of the board last January, after having served ten years without salary. The vase is of Greek design executed in gold by Tiffany from mines of the West.” The article further describes the vase as “with engraved panels reproducing scenes on the lines of the railway.”
George Jay Gould (1864-1923) was the oldest son of financier and railroad magnate Jay Gould (1836-1892) and his wife Helen Day Miller (1838-1889), who he married in 1836. Born in New York City, George chose to forego college and joined his father’s practice instead. By the age of twenty-one, he had already procured a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Upon his father’s death in 1892, he inherited $15 million dollars, and succeeded his father as head of their financial investments and businesses. The family’s holdings included the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and the Missouri Pacific Railroad, of which George was made president of both. He also served as president of the Texas & Pacific Railroad and the Manhattan Railroad Company. At the turn of the turn of the 20th century, Gould was determined to develop a route through the California Feather River Canyon in order to reach San Francisco, a territory through which the Southern Pacific Railroad held a near monopoly. As legal attempts to block his initiative were mounted by the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, Gould cleverly founded third-party entities to disguise his role in the survey and eventual construction of the route. From this mirage syndicate, the Western Pacific Railway was established in 1903.
In 1886, George married glamorous stage actress and noted beauty, Edith Kingdom (1864-1921) at Lyndhurst, his father’s Gothic Revival country house in Tarrytown, New York. The couple had seven children, who were raised between Manhattan at their 857 Fifth Avenue home and their mansion, Georgian Court in Lakewood, New Jersey. An avid sportsman, George enjoyed hunting, fishing, tennis, polo and yachting, and in 1894 purchased the America’s Cup winning yacht, Vigilant, for $25,000.
By the time Edith died of a sudden heart attack while golfing in 1921, George had fathered two children with Guinevere Sinclair (1885-1978) a blonde chorus girl twenty years his junior. Within six months of Edith’s death, George and Guinevere were married, with a third child arriving soon after. To escape the whispers surrounding their new, young family, the couple set out for a prolonged honeymoon, which included touring the recently excavated tomb of King Tutankhamun in Egypt. While there, George contracted pneumonia, which was speculated by some to be the “Curse of the Pharaohs.” By the time the couple had moved on to the French Riviera, George’s illness and worsened and he died at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
PROGRESSIVE ERA CONNECTIONS
As George Jay Gould and Frederick Remington (1861-1909) were both active sportsmen with strong interests in the developing American West, it is of little surprise that they were acquainted. An edition of Remington’s Crooked Trails, published in 1899 and inspired by Remington’s adventures in the West and interactions with various Native American tribes, and inscribed by Remington “To Mrs. George Gould, in remembrance of two happy days on Big Tree – Frederic Remington,” and dated 8 May 1899, was recently sold by Sotheby’s, New York, 21 July 2023, lot 1067. Gould also had a longstanding relationship with Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), or L.C.T., who worked with his father, Jay Gould (1836-1892), on the redecoration of Lyndhurst, in 1882. At the time the Frederic Remington Gold Vase was commissioned, L.C.T. was serving as artistic director of his father’s firm, Tiffany & Co.
L.C.T. had personally become interested in enamels around 1898, with his initial enamel designs executed by Tiffany Studios on copper. By 1907, he had progressed to designing gold and silver for Tiffany & Co. Equipped by former design directors Edward C. Moore (1827-1891), and later John C. Curran (1859-1891), Tiffany & Co.’s enameling studios had already become well-established and were entirely capable of producing the finest enameled hollowware in the United States. In 1908, L.C.T. promoted Albert Angel Southwick (1872-1960) to oversee the firm’s silver and gold production. Southwick, who almost certainly designed the Frederic Remington Gold Vase, had trained in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and Paris, and had a unique personal style that was influenced both by the organic Art Nouveau and the more academic Beaux-Arts classicism, as demonstrated by the elegant lines and proportions of the present vase. A silver vase of similar amphora form designed by Southwick is illustrated in John Loring, Magnificent Tiffany Silver, 2001, p. 232. Designed in 1907, Southwick’s silver vase features inlaid copper with an amber patina, which provides a strikingly similar effect as the enamel of the gold vase. Southwick’s ordered, yet delicately sinuous designs appealed to L.C.T., who’s own style displayed a compatible rhythm. Gustav Stickley noted of Southwick’s design work at Tiffany & Co. “… where freedom of thought is permitted there is a new art feeling, the using of simple designs in permanently beautiful effects.” L.C.T. and Southwick worked closely until 1919, and it is believed that Southwick is likely responsible for the finished drawings of enamel designs originally conceived and sketched by L.C.T.
TIFFANY & REMINGTON: A UNIQUE COLLABORATION
Known to be the premier maker of American silver and jewelry, selecting Tiffany & Co. for the commission of the Frederic Remington Gold Vase would have been an obvious choice. Although it is presently unknown how Frederic Remington’s firm was chosen to contribute to the vase’s design, this gold vase is apparently the only collaboration between Remington and Tiffany & Co. The letter preserved in the folio that accompanies the present lot states that Frederic Remington “executed the decorative designs and hammered them into the throat of the cup. Then the intaglio was filled with Tiffany’s special amber enamel and the whole vase was fired. For his part, Mr. Remington received $1000.” Although Remington was likely recently deceased when this vase was made, it is probable that his surviving firm executed the chased and engraved intaglios featured on both sides of the vase’s neck before the enameling was completed in the Tiffany & Co. workshops. The enameled figures of Native American warriors on horseback are unlike anything else produced by Tiffany & Co. A silver and enamel urn depicting Ceres and Flora in the collection of the Allentown Museum of Art (illustrated Janet Zapata, The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1993 p. 148) and a large silver, gold and enamel vase painted with maidens, sold in these rooms on 24 January 2020, lot 380, both made for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, exemplify Tiffany & Co.’s inclination for more painterly enameled decoration, relying on gradation of opaque colors to indicate light and dimension. In contrast, the dimension of the figures depicted on the present gold vase are indicated by interplay between the depth of the chasing and the pooling of the translucent enamels. The effect is much more reminiscent of Remington’s wood block prints; as if one of his carved matrices was filled with amber enamel.
The Native American figures featured in enamel are after watercolors painted by Remington in 1892 for Francis Parkman’s novel Oregon Trail, which depicts the adventures and struggles of Western pioneers in the mid-19th century. The figure of the chief is derived from He Rides Round and Round in Great Circle of Lodges, and can be found in Remington’s catalogue raisonné (catalogue number 01405). The other figure is taken from Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun, and is in the collection of the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York (catalogue number 01390).
AMON G. CARTER: WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
“Fort Worth is where the West begins… and Dallas is where the East peters out,” was the often-quoted and favorite sentiment of Texas news and oil man Amon G. Carter (1879-1955). The shortened phrase, “Where the West Begins,” can still be found on the front page of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the newspaper established by Carter in 1909. Raised in Bowie, Texas, Carter performed odd jobs to support himself in his youth, including selling self-hunted-rabbit sandwiches, which he advertised as “chicken” through the open train windows of passengers traveling through Bowie. In 1905 he relocated to Fort Worth, Texas and soon after became an investor in the new paper The Fort Worth Star. Within three years he had raised enough capital to purchase the Star’s rival paper, the Fort Worth Telegram, thus eliminating his competition. Demonstrating acuity for salesmanship and unearthing opportunities, Carter began investing in oil, radio and eventually television in 1948. Carter was also interested in aeronautics; in 1930 he was a founding member of American Airways, which later became American Airlines. Additionally, he was instrumental in securing the construction of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, now the headquarters of Lockheed Martin.
Through the combination of wealth, influence and his larger-than-life cowboy persona, Carter emerged as a national spokesman for the Fort Worth area. He portrayed himself as the embodiment of Texas, often dressing as a cowboy for public appearances. He befriended political leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, and Hollywood celebrities including Bob Hope and Will Rogers, whom he hosted at his ranch, Shady Oak Farm.
The Frederic Remington Gold Vase represents the nexus of Carter’s two areas of collecting: Western art, specifically that of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, and American precious metals in the form of rare numismatics. His coin collection, which began in the 1930’s with a $2.50 gold piece, grew to include marvelous rarities including 1884 and 1885 trade dollars (with mintages of only 10 and 5 Proof examples respectively), an 1804 Bowed Liberty Dollar (15 known surviving examples) and the $5 coin of 1822 (three known surviving examples). When Carter died in 1955, the American coin collection was inherited by his son Amon Carter Jr., a great numismatics collector in his own right, and was protected in the large vault in his Fort Worth office. Mid-century photographs of the vase and folio in the collection of the University of Texas Libraries suggest that the Frederic Remington Gold Vase may have been kept in the office vault as well.
Carter’s substantial collection of American art comprised over 300 works including sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Remington and his contemporaries. Upon his death, Carter’s will expressed his wish to build a museum of Western American art that was free to the public for “As a youth, I was denied the advantages which go with the possession of money.” His daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson (1923-2013), implemented his wishes and oversaw the development of the museum. With his personal collection serving as the cornerstone of the collection, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened its doors in January 1961. The permanent collection currently encompasses over 200,000 works and is one of the nation’s most important museums dedicated to American art.
By September 1953 the Frederic Remington Gold Vase was in the possession of Edward Eberstadt & Sons, a New York-based rare book dealer specializing in Western Americana. Eberstadt approached Carter to purchase the Tiffany gold vase, and a matching “Tiffany gold cup carrying an embellishment in amber enamel of a Remington subject." Carter purchased the large vase for $12,500 on 25 September 1953, but decided to return the small cup to Eberstadt five days later (see M. Vinson, Eberstadt & Sons Rare Booksellers of Western Americana, 2016, p. 119). On 4 October 1912 The New York Sun noted that the vase was accompanied by a base composed of gold quartz and a “miniature reproduction of the vase”, that was gifted to Mrs. Gould. The whereabouts of the small gold cup and the quartz base are presently unknown, although it appears the base had been separated from the Tiffany vase by the time it was offered to Carter in 1953.
Among the earliest published documentation for the Frederic Remington Gold Vase is an article published in The Railroad and Engineering Review on 12 October 1912. The article notes the “Directors of the Denver & Rio Grande R. R. have presented to George J. Gould a gold vase in testimonial of his long services with the road. Mr. Gould resigned as chairman of the board last January, after having served ten years without salary. The vase is of Greek design executed in gold by Tiffany from mines of the West.” The article further describes the vase as “with engraved panels reproducing scenes on the lines of the railway.”
George Jay Gould (1864-1923) was the oldest son of financier and railroad magnate Jay Gould (1836-1892) and his wife Helen Day Miller (1838-1889), who he married in 1836. Born in New York City, George chose to forego college and joined his father’s practice instead. By the age of twenty-one, he had already procured a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Upon his father’s death in 1892, he inherited $15 million dollars, and succeeded his father as head of their financial investments and businesses. The family’s holdings included the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and the Missouri Pacific Railroad, of which George was made president of both. He also served as president of the Texas & Pacific Railroad and the Manhattan Railroad Company. At the turn of the turn of the 20th century, Gould was determined to develop a route through the California Feather River Canyon in order to reach San Francisco, a territory through which the Southern Pacific Railroad held a near monopoly. As legal attempts to block his initiative were mounted by the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, Gould cleverly founded third-party entities to disguise his role in the survey and eventual construction of the route. From this mirage syndicate, the Western Pacific Railway was established in 1903.
In 1886, George married glamorous stage actress and noted beauty, Edith Kingdom (1864-1921) at Lyndhurst, his father’s Gothic Revival country house in Tarrytown, New York. The couple had seven children, who were raised between Manhattan at their 857 Fifth Avenue home and their mansion, Georgian Court in Lakewood, New Jersey. An avid sportsman, George enjoyed hunting, fishing, tennis, polo and yachting, and in 1894 purchased the America’s Cup winning yacht, Vigilant, for $25,000.
By the time Edith died of a sudden heart attack while golfing in 1921, George had fathered two children with Guinevere Sinclair (1885-1978) a blonde chorus girl twenty years his junior. Within six months of Edith’s death, George and Guinevere were married, with a third child arriving soon after. To escape the whispers surrounding their new, young family, the couple set out for a prolonged honeymoon, which included touring the recently excavated tomb of King Tutankhamun in Egypt. While there, George contracted pneumonia, which was speculated by some to be the “Curse of the Pharaohs.” By the time the couple had moved on to the French Riviera, George’s illness and worsened and he died at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
PROGRESSIVE ERA CONNECTIONS
As George Jay Gould and Frederick Remington (1861-1909) were both active sportsmen with strong interests in the developing American West, it is of little surprise that they were acquainted. An edition of Remington’s Crooked Trails, published in 1899 and inspired by Remington’s adventures in the West and interactions with various Native American tribes, and inscribed by Remington “To Mrs. George Gould, in remembrance of two happy days on Big Tree – Frederic Remington,” and dated 8 May 1899, was recently sold by Sotheby’s, New York, 21 July 2023, lot 1067. Gould also had a longstanding relationship with Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), or L.C.T., who worked with his father, Jay Gould (1836-1892), on the redecoration of Lyndhurst, in 1882. At the time the Frederic Remington Gold Vase was commissioned, L.C.T. was serving as artistic director of his father’s firm, Tiffany & Co.
L.C.T. had personally become interested in enamels around 1898, with his initial enamel designs executed by Tiffany Studios on copper. By 1907, he had progressed to designing gold and silver for Tiffany & Co. Equipped by former design directors Edward C. Moore (1827-1891), and later John C. Curran (1859-1891), Tiffany & Co.’s enameling studios had already become well-established and were entirely capable of producing the finest enameled hollowware in the United States. In 1908, L.C.T. promoted Albert Angel Southwick (1872-1960) to oversee the firm’s silver and gold production. Southwick, who almost certainly designed the Frederic Remington Gold Vase, had trained in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and Paris, and had a unique personal style that was influenced both by the organic Art Nouveau and the more academic Beaux-Arts classicism, as demonstrated by the elegant lines and proportions of the present vase. A silver vase of similar amphora form designed by Southwick is illustrated in John Loring, Magnificent Tiffany Silver, 2001, p. 232. Designed in 1907, Southwick’s silver vase features inlaid copper with an amber patina, which provides a strikingly similar effect as the enamel of the gold vase. Southwick’s ordered, yet delicately sinuous designs appealed to L.C.T., who’s own style displayed a compatible rhythm. Gustav Stickley noted of Southwick’s design work at Tiffany & Co. “… where freedom of thought is permitted there is a new art feeling, the using of simple designs in permanently beautiful effects.” L.C.T. and Southwick worked closely until 1919, and it is believed that Southwick is likely responsible for the finished drawings of enamel designs originally conceived and sketched by L.C.T.
TIFFANY & REMINGTON: A UNIQUE COLLABORATION
Known to be the premier maker of American silver and jewelry, selecting Tiffany & Co. for the commission of the Frederic Remington Gold Vase would have been an obvious choice. Although it is presently unknown how Frederic Remington’s firm was chosen to contribute to the vase’s design, this gold vase is apparently the only collaboration between Remington and Tiffany & Co. The letter preserved in the folio that accompanies the present lot states that Frederic Remington “executed the decorative designs and hammered them into the throat of the cup. Then the intaglio was filled with Tiffany’s special amber enamel and the whole vase was fired. For his part, Mr. Remington received $1000.” Although Remington was likely recently deceased when this vase was made, it is probable that his surviving firm executed the chased and engraved intaglios featured on both sides of the vase’s neck before the enameling was completed in the Tiffany & Co. workshops. The enameled figures of Native American warriors on horseback are unlike anything else produced by Tiffany & Co. A silver and enamel urn depicting Ceres and Flora in the collection of the Allentown Museum of Art (illustrated Janet Zapata, The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1993 p. 148) and a large silver, gold and enamel vase painted with maidens, sold in these rooms on 24 January 2020, lot 380, both made for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, exemplify Tiffany & Co.’s inclination for more painterly enameled decoration, relying on gradation of opaque colors to indicate light and dimension. In contrast, the dimension of the figures depicted on the present gold vase are indicated by interplay between the depth of the chasing and the pooling of the translucent enamels. The effect is much more reminiscent of Remington’s wood block prints; as if one of his carved matrices was filled with amber enamel.
The Native American figures featured in enamel are after watercolors painted by Remington in 1892 for Francis Parkman’s novel Oregon Trail, which depicts the adventures and struggles of Western pioneers in the mid-19th century. The figure of the chief is derived from He Rides Round and Round in Great Circle of Lodges, and can be found in Remington’s catalogue raisonné (catalogue number 01405). The other figure is taken from Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun, and is in the collection of the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York (catalogue number 01390).
AMON G. CARTER: WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
“Fort Worth is where the West begins… and Dallas is where the East peters out,” was the often-quoted and favorite sentiment of Texas news and oil man Amon G. Carter (1879-1955). The shortened phrase, “Where the West Begins,” can still be found on the front page of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the newspaper established by Carter in 1909. Raised in Bowie, Texas, Carter performed odd jobs to support himself in his youth, including selling self-hunted-rabbit sandwiches, which he advertised as “chicken” through the open train windows of passengers traveling through Bowie. In 1905 he relocated to Fort Worth, Texas and soon after became an investor in the new paper The Fort Worth Star. Within three years he had raised enough capital to purchase the Star’s rival paper, the Fort Worth Telegram, thus eliminating his competition. Demonstrating acuity for salesmanship and unearthing opportunities, Carter began investing in oil, radio and eventually television in 1948. Carter was also interested in aeronautics; in 1930 he was a founding member of American Airways, which later became American Airlines. Additionally, he was instrumental in securing the construction of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, now the headquarters of Lockheed Martin.
Through the combination of wealth, influence and his larger-than-life cowboy persona, Carter emerged as a national spokesman for the Fort Worth area. He portrayed himself as the embodiment of Texas, often dressing as a cowboy for public appearances. He befriended political leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, and Hollywood celebrities including Bob Hope and Will Rogers, whom he hosted at his ranch, Shady Oak Farm.
The Frederic Remington Gold Vase represents the nexus of Carter’s two areas of collecting: Western art, specifically that of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, and American precious metals in the form of rare numismatics. His coin collection, which began in the 1930’s with a $2.50 gold piece, grew to include marvelous rarities including 1884 and 1885 trade dollars (with mintages of only 10 and 5 Proof examples respectively), an 1804 Bowed Liberty Dollar (15 known surviving examples) and the $5 coin of 1822 (three known surviving examples). When Carter died in 1955, the American coin collection was inherited by his son Amon Carter Jr., a great numismatics collector in his own right, and was protected in the large vault in his Fort Worth office. Mid-century photographs of the vase and folio in the collection of the University of Texas Libraries suggest that the Frederic Remington Gold Vase may have been kept in the office vault as well.
Carter’s substantial collection of American art comprised over 300 works including sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Remington and his contemporaries. Upon his death, Carter’s will expressed his wish to build a museum of Western American art that was free to the public for “As a youth, I was denied the advantages which go with the possession of money.” His daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson (1923-2013), implemented his wishes and oversaw the development of the museum. With his personal collection serving as the cornerstone of the collection, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened its doors in January 1961. The permanent collection currently encompasses over 200,000 works and is one of the nation’s most important museums dedicated to American art.
By September 1953 the Frederic Remington Gold Vase was in the possession of Edward Eberstadt & Sons, a New York-based rare book dealer specializing in Western Americana. Eberstadt approached Carter to purchase the Tiffany gold vase, and a matching “Tiffany gold cup carrying an embellishment in amber enamel of a Remington subject." Carter purchased the large vase for $12,500 on 25 September 1953, but decided to return the small cup to Eberstadt five days later (see M. Vinson, Eberstadt & Sons Rare Booksellers of Western Americana, 2016, p. 119). On 4 October 1912 The New York Sun noted that the vase was accompanied by a base composed of gold quartz and a “miniature reproduction of the vase”, that was gifted to Mrs. Gould. The whereabouts of the small gold cup and the quartz base are presently unknown, although it appears the base had been separated from the Tiffany vase by the time it was offered to Carter in 1953.