Group of antique watercolor estate paintings by Thomas Bancroft (Am., 1864-1934). Your bid is for the lot of all 4 items. Including the matting, each piece is 12 x 9 inches or smaller. The label pictured is on the back of each one. None are framed.

Bancroft lived in Collingswood, NJ, was trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) under Thomas Eakins' tenure, was a Member of the PAFA Fellowship and the Philadelphia Print Club, and was staff artist (illustrator) for Ladies Home Journal.

The provenance includes: the Bancroft family estate, then to Sanski Art Center Studio & Gallery, 50 Tanner Street, Haddonfield, New Jersey owned by Albert E. Sandecki (d.2013) & Karl M. Sandecki (d.2004), who’d bought the Bancroft estate ca. 1970 which included Thomas Bancroft’s paintings, drawings and etchings. After the Sanski (Sandecki) brothers passed away, the Sanski Gallery estate was handled by Brown’s Cleanouts (Brownie’s) but somehow C. Neri Antiques on South Street in Philly was involved, as was a local country auction where both Brown’s and Neri consigned Sanski estate items (which is where I acquired these paintings and others). See my other listings for more Bancroft paintings and other Sanski Estate artworks.

Thomas F. Bancroft (Am., 1864-1934) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and was a Member there (Fellowship). As Thomas Eakins left the Academy in 1886 (Bancroft would have been 22 years old in that year), Eakins was one of Bancroft's instructors there. Thomas Bancroft was an honored exhibitor with the Philadelphia Print Club, as well as a Staff Artist / Illustrator with Ladies Home Journal and other periodicals from the turn of the century to the 30's.

A Google search shows results such as the May, 1925 Ladies Home Journal where Bancroft illustrated 'Rain In Spring' by Dorothy Sorensen. T.F. Bancroft also illustrated 'Be Still My Heart' by Roscoe Gilmore Scott. See SIRIS (Smithsonian) website for public collections this artist is included in. Bancroft's work ranges from tight Golden Age Illustration Art to Tonalist to American Impressionist landscape scenes.

Thomas and his wife Mary Bancroft lived at 110 Washington Avenue in Collingswood, NJ, so that’s the specific location for ‘provenance’ of all the Bancroft art work I’m offering, and the estate would have surfaced around 1970 as that’s when their son, Ray, passed away (he’d lived in the house all his life).

These paintings are from the late 1800’s-early 1900’s. They were never framed before, just simply matted and shrink wrapped in-house by Sanski Gallery. See pictures posted of Sanski's sign and gallery ephemera which are not included in this sale, but serve to illustrate the items’ past-ownership history.

Albert Sandecki (per the Who Was Who In American Art: PAFA Fellow, Art Instructor, Art Conservator, and Museum represented artist) was a Philadelphia-area art dealer with years of experience as was his brother Karl.

In the early 2000’s, Sanski Gallery was closing shop since the brother-owners, Albert and Karl Sandecki (their father, Edward A. Sanski (1906-77), who started the business, changed the family name to Sanski back around mid-century) were retiring. They had advertised sales where prices would be reduced in order to liquidate as much as possible, and at the time I bought some select pieces from them.

A decade or so later, when the brothers passed away, the remaining gallery inventory (and there was a lot of it!) needed to be sold and cleared out because the building in Haddonfield had to be sold (and it did sell for $1.2 million in 2014). The estate cleanout company that handled it was Brown’s Cleanouts (Brownie’s), and what they did with most if not all of the items was consign them to local country auctions where some things were sold individually, some in little stacks on tables, some in box lots, etc. This was years ago.

Skip to 2019, and it was like deja vu. Sanski Gallery artwork showed up again at a local auction, but this time they were telling us that the items are from a gallery in Philadelphia. They wouldn’t say where because they never do, but my ‘insider’ friend said it was Neri Lighting, aka C. Neri Antiques on South Street.

As you can imagine, the Sanski Gallery, having been located in the affluent Haddonfield area where Steven Spielberg is from, came across a lot of high end art since their opening in 1954. A 1979 New York Times article on them, “A Shopful Of Paintings In Haddonfield”, describes some inventory at the time by artists Emil Carlsen, Newbold Trotter, Alson Skinner Clark, Thomas Bancroft, etc. Having spent their summers in Harborside, Maine since 1964, they’d found a lot of treasures up there, too, over the years.

Albert Sandecki was PAFA trained, taught art classes at Sanski Art Center (120 students per week), was in-house art conservator, and his own paintings hang in museums such as the Corcoran. He received the President’s “Volunteer Service Award” in 2008. Karl Sandecki’s role was mostly ‘searching out’ the artwork, gallery sales, etc.

The Sanski Gallery was a place that was jam packed with art (American to European, 1700’s-1900’s) from floor to ceiling! See the pictures posted of their original store sign, old photos, newspaper articles, etc.