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GREATEST PICTURE SALE. Nearly $250, 000 Realized from the Clarke Collection. The paintings Offered Were by American Artist and New Prices Have Been Set for Their Work-Sale a Financial Success-Inness's "Delaware Valley" Brings $8,100 and Winslow Homer's "Eight Bells" $4,7000- Vase Brings $8,000. The greatest picture sale, in some respects. that the country has known, was concluded at Chickering Hall last evening, when Thomas E. Kirby, for the American Art Association. sold the last of Thomas B. Clarke's collection of American paintings. which numbered in all 32, the total of the prices paid during the four nights' auction being $234,495. There have been sales that have brought more money, but they have been principally of foreign paintings, and Mr. Kirby, who has conducted most of them and seen them all, is authority for the statement that there never has been, in his experience, another sale of a collection of pictures here which paid a profit to the collector, as the Clarke sale has done, with the possible exception of a very much smaller sale, that of Mr. Fuller's paintings, held here not long ago. Mr. Fuller was not at hand last evening to verify the exception. Mr. Clarke was abundantly pleased with the appreciation shown of American art, to the support of which he had devoted himself for a quarter of century. He declines to admit that it required force of conviction or anything else but appreciation of good work to buy the Innesses, which have proved, perhaps, the most conspicuous part of his collection, or the other notable America works which have received the praise of the critics recently and the support of the purchasing public this week. Mr. Clarke shared in the view expressed in THE SUN'S report of the first evening's sale that there never had been one like it in the United States, and that it indicated a hitherto almost unsuspected appreciation of the best efforts of American artists, judged on their accomplishments. The results of the sale completed have fulfilled the indications of its beginning. New prices have been set for works of artists represented, and buyers have shown a readiness and in some cases an eagerness to purchase, even if not always with a discrimination equal to that shown by Mr. Clarke. The unprecedented price, for an American paintings at public sale, of $10,150 for the Inness, "Gray, Lowery Day," of Thursday evening's sale, fanciful as it was, set an example that bore fruits last evening. Its effects were seen when the first Innesses were put up. The "Italian Landscape" (285). a painting of 1875, sold at $700, the "Passing Shower" (297), of 1865, at $875, 'The Sun" (311), 1886, at $760, "Brush Burning" (311). 1884, at $1,525, "Threatening" (341), 1891, at $2,000, "Winter Morning_Montclair,),"(351), which started at $1,000, at $2,500, the "Summer Foliage"(361), 1888, starting also at $1,000at, $2,200, the "Delaware Valley" (365), 1865, at $8,100, the top price of Innesses for the night- and "After a Summer Shower" (372), 1894, at $2,500. The Delaware Valley" was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the purchased led Mr. Kirby to remark to the spectators, "They've woke up" evidently referring to their permitting a paintings, which, it had been hoped would remain here, to go to Philadelphia on the evening before.