If you’re still looking for the perfect holiday gift for your favorite numismatist — or yourself — Sotheby’s is offering one of the most important paintings by trompe l’oeil painter Otis Kaye through its Private Sales division.

The 1969 work titled Seasons Greetings II is an oil on canvas mounted on board measuring approximately 40 by 32 inches and its provenance goes back directly to the artist. The price is available upon request to the department.

It was a standout in the 2015 exhibit Otis Kaye: Money, Mystery and Mastery at Connecticut’s New Britain Museum of American Art. Sotheby’s points out many details in the picture — including a self-portrait held by an illusionistic tack and identification of the paper money and symbols depicted.

The work is Kaye’s last major painting before his death in 1974, and the artist’s depiction of himself in his eighties with a completed tic tac toe game provides elements that a viewer can read symbolically as a tree of life. The tree branches are made of notes and packs of bills, with seasonal objects like a candy cane, an ornament filled with money, and even a small restrained Santa providing seasonal references. “He leaves the viewers to draw their own conclusions, adding a sardonic AND TO / ALL A / GOOD NIGHT,” as the 2015 exhibit pointed out.

Born in Germany in 1885, the artist lived in Illinois for a time. Several references to Chicago are seen, including a Dec. 7, 1941, envelope from the First National Bank of Chicago, referencing the attack on Pearl Harbor. The 1969 date of the painting’s creation is on the Kennedy half dollar, with literary references to Charles Dickens and Scrooge, and financial sayings revealed in the various ticker tapes, like “BUY LO SEL HI,” along with “GO FROM RAGS TO RICHES” and “MONEY IS POWER.” 

According to Sotheby’s, “The shiny coins are presented like shimmering ornaments along with pearls and precious stones,” and the selection of coins is intriguing, such as a 1933 Saint-Gaudens $20 double eagle. Today, the famed 1933 issue is represented by a single collectible example. It ties into Kaye’s interest in economic history as its distribution was thwarted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102, where he recalled gold coins, though excluding those “gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins.”

While little is known about Kaye’s relationship to collecting, his paintings provide visual evidence that he was interested in historical coins, and the painting includes a 1796 Draped Bust silver coin and a 1652-dated early Massachusetts silver coin.

Silver dollar fans will recognize a 1935 Peace dollar and something unfamiliar: an 1865 Morgan dollar — a date referencing the end of the Civil War but a numismatic impossibility since Morgan dollars were first minted in 1878. A 1929 Walking Liberty half dollar, a 1959 Franklin half dollar, a 1961 Lincoln cent and rolls of Indian Head $10 eagles and Washington quarter dollars that intrude into a viewer’s space are just a few of the recognizable issues in this work by the painter who loves to fool the viewer, while also making them think.

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