Historic Painting at Fair

Orlando Hand Bears’s painting of Ephraim Byram, from 1834, is a life-size portrait of an important figure in Sag Harbor history. Martin Cohen, who once had a gallery on Madison Avenue and shops in Water Mill and Wainscott many years ago, will have it for sale at his booth at Market Art + Design beginning today. The fair will run through Sunday.

The painting was used as the back cover of the Sag Harbor Historical Society’s “History of Sag Harbor.” The subject is seen with a telescope on a backlit clear night. The dimensions of the work are 81 by 41 inches, a size reserved in that time for grand history paintings. Clearly, the artist or his subject wanted to convey the sitter’s importance and intellect.

Bears lived from 1811 to 1851 and painted portraits of the wealthy whaling families of Sag Harbor as well as notable New Englanders.  The few signed and dated portraits he executed were dated from the mid-to-late-1830s, according to a 2008 Christie’s sales catalogue, where a smaller Bears double portrait of a couple sold for $115,000. Mr. Cohen’s price for his painting is $475,000.

Byram, who was an astronomer and clockmaker, lived in a house near Oakland Cemetery called Oakland Cottage. The clocks he made throughout his life ended up in places such as the Sag Harbor Methodist Church, City Hall in Manhattan, and the Old Whalers Church steeple in Sag Harbor, which was knocked down by the 1938 Hurricane. The art fair, which is running simultaneously with Art Southampton, also in Bridgehampton, will be open through Sunday.