Page 111 - 2019 September 11th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art

The present lot illustrated in American Art Association, 17th-19th January 1916, lot 50.

William Cobbett Skinner (1857-1947) (fig. 1) was born into
the illustrious Skinner family of Massachusetts. His father,
William Skinner (1834-1902), had emigrated from England
to the United States in 1843 and founded a lucrative textile
business on the East Coast. By 1860, his success as an
industrialist was cemented and the area surrounding his
textile mills was simply referred to as ‘Skinnerville’. William
Cobbett joined the family business and continued it following
his father’s death in 1902. By 1912, Skinner’s was the largest
silk mill in the world. William and his sister Belle Skinner
inherited their parent’s home ‘Wisteriahurst’, Holyoke,
Massachusetts and several homes in New York City, and are
believed to have decorated them with Asian art purchased
from auctions in New York as well as from their travels to The present lot entry in American Art Association, 17th-19th January
China and Japan in 1889 and 1909. Both William and Belle 1916, lot 500
attended the auction of the Prince Kung Collection at the
American Art Galleries on the 27th-28th February 1913 and
were named in the press reports at the time as one of the
buyers in the sales, corroborated by William’s own diary
entry at the time where he writes that they ‘bought many
things’, including two large cloisonné enamel palace burners
for which they paid over $4,000. His diary entry for 20th
January 1916 records his purchase of a ‘pair of teakwood
panels, #500’, corresponding with the present lot, which
were described as having formerly been in the collection of
the Imperial family. The panels are believed to have hung in
the Skinner mansion at 36 East 39th Street in New York City
and have remained in the family since.

109