August 2013 | Rebecca Rego Barry

FORE! Edge Painting At Auction

Lot163.jpg One of two golf-related fore-edge paintings at auction this week. This one is by Martin Frost, "recently drawn but in an early/classic style," of the U.S. Women's Amateur Championship of 1898. It appears in/on Golf: Badminton Library by Horace Hutchinson. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1890. The estimate is $800-1,000.

An exhaustive collection of rare golf books and memorabilia goes to auction on Thursday at PBA Galleries in San Francisco. The collection of Dr. Robert Weisgerber, with additions, runs to 598 lots of golf books, art, and objects. In addition to some high spots of golf book collecting--Macdonald's Scotland's Gift, Mackenzie's Golf Architecture, Horace Hutchinson's Golf,--the collection contains magazines, club histories, tournament programs, autographs, photographs, posters, scorecards, even a few clubs. A long run of Golf: A Weekly Record of "Ye Royal and Ancient Game" has by far the highest estimate at $20,000-30,000. But I found the fore-edge paintings quaint.

Lot164.jpg The second of two golf-related fore-edge paintings. This unattributed painting shows a woman golfer putting, with a male golfer observing. It appears in/on a 1904 edition Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works. London: Henry Frowde. The estimate is $400-600.

PBA is known for specialist golf book sales, and we've covered several in the past few years. For more golf books at auction, go here, here, and here.