Southern Highlights at the Copley Fine Art Auctions Winter Sale

Every winter, the Massachusetts-based Copley Fine Art Auctions, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, curates some of the most exciting finds in sporting art—from paintings to antique decoys to folk art—sourced from collections all over the country.

Last year’s winter sale brought in $3 million, with the highest lot, a carved dowitcher pair by Newton Dexter and Clarence T. Gardner, selling for $222,000. This year the two-day sale begins on February 20 (after being previewed at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston earlier this month), and its 636 lots are packed with treasures. There’s a preening pintail decoy by Charles H. Perdew; a watercolor of a woodcock by Frank Benson; seventy-four carved pieces by Elmer Crowell; carvings of a brook trout, wood duck, swan, and great horned owl from Mark S. McNair; and even a hand-stitched catch flag that Ernest Hemingway used on his boat, Pilar. 

Below, browse eight standout lots from this year’s winter sale.

The Pointer-Deep River-Jim, a 1913 painting by Percival Rosseau. Rosseau was born near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and became a leading painter of sporting dogs. Deep River likely refers to the Deep River in North Carolina near High Point, where in 1904 Clarence H. Mackay built his hunting lodge, Deep River Lodge, which included kennels for a hundred dogs.

Harry Curieux Adamson, a lauded bird painter from California, exhibited work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History during his long career. This is one of his rare paintings of a covey of bobwhite quail.

Luke Frazier’s depiction of a ten-point buck investigating a licking branch, titled Working the Scrape. 

Walter Matia—known for his extraordinary level of detail—created this life-size bronze sculpture of a Southern pines pointer.  

Ernest Hemingway was an accomplished angler and spent years fishing Florida waters on his thirty-eight-foot boat, Pilar—with this hand-sewn marlin flag flying atop it. The flag, which has never been offered for public sale before, is considered one of the famed author’s most important surviving personal effects. 

This 1871 oil on canvas by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, titled Pointer, Setter, and Quail, shows a red setter and a pointer on a small covey of bobwhite quail. It also captures Tait, one of the country’s earliest sporting artists, at his peak and in his element depicting a classic hunting scene.

Peter Corbin is known for his depictions of wing shooting and fly fishing—like this scene, titled Redfish Along the Bank. 

The hyperrealistic decoys of carver Mike Borrett rarely include warm-water fish, but here he turns his skill to a fifty-two-inch-long tarpon.