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THE SUN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1899. CLARKE PICTURE SALE. ADDED PROOF OF ESTEEM FOR AMERICAN PAINTINGS. Those Sold Last Evening Brought Even Better Prices Than Ruled on Tuesday—$5,600 for Inness's "Wood Gatherers" the Top Figure—Bric-a-Brac Sold in Afternoon. Ninety-three more paintings out of Thomas B. Clarke's collection were sold last evening at Chickering Hall. The attendance was larger than on Tuesday evening and the buying was discriminating. The absence of dealers as any large factor in the buying is not in the least discouraging to the managers of the sale or to Mr. Clarke, who rather welcomes the somewhat diversified appreciation shown of his judgment as a collector of American artists' work. Although the total of last evening's sales was somewhat less than that of the first night's. while the number of pictures offered was the same, the sale was regarded as even a better one than Tuesday's, taken as a whole, inasmuch as the number of small and unimportant paintings in the night's catalogue was greater than in Tuesday's. These smaller examples brought higher prices proportionately than those of Tuesday, and the total number the selling price of which was less than Mr. Clarke had paid for them was only one-quarter of the whole lot, as against one-third of those sold on the evening before. Several of the Innesses, however, went at prices which could not be called high, and there was a general confidence expressed that a very few years would see an advance in the commercial value of all of them. The high figure for the night was fetched by an Inness, and beat Tuesday evening's high price, which was commanded by Homer Martin, by $100. It was $5,600, paid by George A. Hearn for the exquisite "Wood Gatherers." The spectators applauded when the bidding got to $5,000, but the bidders were not yet finished. The total for the evening was $50,555, which, with the $54,040 of the first night's sale, makes $104,595 for the paintings so far sold, or half, in number, of the whole collection. The sale of Mr. Clarke's objects of art was begun yesterday afternoon, and the $12,568.50 realized from that makes the proceeds of the entire sale to date $117,163.50. The afternoon sale presented some interesting features which will be referred to below. "The whole country has been down on Spain and things Spanish," was the facetious remark made by one spectator at its close, "but certainly those Moorish potters who in the sixteenth century took their art into Spain were vindicated today." The remark was elicited by the fact that little more than half a hundred of the Hispano-Mauresqua plaques sold for $9,082.50, the figures for the individual sales running from $200 or $300 to $1,200. The afternoon sales, like those of the evenings, are likely to grow rather than lose in interest. This afternoon the Chinese porcelains are among the pieces to be put up. The two paintings that most worked up the bidders last evening, aside from the "Wood Gatherers," were Winslow Homer's strong "The Life Line," and the same artist's splendid marine, "Maine Coast." The paintings sold at within $100 of each other. The "Maine Coast" came the earlier in the catalogue, with its fine surf bursting in the air high above the rocks, and the foaming waters bubbling between the boulders lower down, and the billows of the open ocean rolling beyond. The spectators applauded when the bidding, which had started at $1,500, jumped from $3,300 to $3,500, and again when it passed the $4,000 mark. The painting went to F. A. Bell at $4,400. "The Life Line" was the last number on the catalogue. A thousand dollars was the opening bid for it. It is the picture formerly in the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe collection. It is said that that owner paid $3,000 for it. It did not take long for the bids last evening to get above that figure, and it looked for a time as though the New York public would have the painting here for its delectation hereafter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art permitted the painting to go to Pennsylvania, perhaps for $50. Thomas E. Kirby, the auctioneer, when the bid reached $4,500, cried it for a long time and held his gavel poised, reluctant to close at that figure. The advances had all been by $100 or more. Finally he said: "I'll take $50 from you." But the New Yorkers were mum, and George W. Elkins of Philadelphia took the painting. The ten Innesses sold last evening are to be pretty well scattered. C. J. Blair of Chicago got "A Sunny Autumn Day" for $4,100. E. McMillan pair $1,400 for "The Mill Pond," and had some lively competition. Laflin Kellogg got "Autumn Silence" for $1,325. For the "End of the Rain" $500 and $600 offers were scorned, and the first bid called was $1,000. The painting went to Louis Marshall for $1,550. J. S. Bache took the "Rocky Dell" at $550. Robert Blum (whose "Toledo Water Carrier" sold last night for $290) go the "Afternoon Glow, Pompton, N. J.," for $1,650. G. W. Curtis got "Night" for $710. The buyers of some of the lesser ones were not announced. The people in the hall expressed their gratification at the announcement that Charles H. Davie's "The Deepening Shadows" and Charles Melville Dewey's "Edge of the Forest" were to go to the Corcoran gallery at Washington. The sale of the first catalogue division of Mr. Clarke's art objects, both those of large value and those of interest mainly curious, or having the interest of oddities, at the American Art Galleries in the afternoon, showed some surprises. That this sale, no less than the sale of the paintings collected by him, had attracted a good deal of attention was evidenced bu the considerable number of people drawn to the largest of the galleries in Madison Square, where the auction took place, as well as by the numerous orders sent in both by telegraph and telephone even after the sale had begun. It was evident that the conditions of travel had kept away persons who desired an opportunity to bid on some of Mr. Clarke's selections. The sale also gave indications of the change of public taste, the bids on some of the numbers going well beyond the prices paid for them by Mr. Clarke, while on articles of a wholly different class they fell so far short as to cause some remark. The classes showing the most noticeable diversities were the Hispano-Mauresque porcelains and the Persian objects. The former presented some remarkable advances on previous prices, and the latter all but went begging. Some commercial houses, however, will reap profits by no means meager on purchases of the Persian goods. There has been no sale of what is, in common parlance, called bric-à-brac within the last few years with which the best of Mr. Clarke's objects of art, sold at auction, may be compared, except that of the collection made by Charles A. Dana. Although in its entirety that collection stood by itself, there were in it specimens which present a comparative for some of Mr. Clarke's. And Mr. Dana's collection is represented in the Clarke sale by some purchases made when it was out up at auction. At yesterday's sale of No. 51 on the Clarke catalogue, a large Hispano-Mauresque plaque of brilliant copper lustre, which Mr. Clarke bought for little more than $300 at the Dana sale, sold for $650.