American Classics
Iconic American imagery brings in more than $19 million at Sotheby’s fall sale in Newyork City
Iconic American imagery brings in more than $19 million at Sotheby’s fall sale in New York City
On November 13, Sotheby’s American art auction racked up $19.4 million in sales, with many of the works showing historic and iconic subjects from around the country—native Americans on horseback, New Mexican pueblos, magnificent landscapes, Saturday Evening Post paintings from the
Golden Age of Illustration and impressionist images of girls amid lush garden scenery. The top lot was Albert Bierstadt’s Indians Crossing the Columbia River, estimated at $1.5 million to $2.5 million, which sold for nearly $2.2 million.the luminist landscape, with its orange and yellow sunset cascading around the silhouetted figures rowing over glass-like water, was joined by several other important landscapes from the West: Marsden Hartley’s New Mexico Recollections
(est. $700/1,000,000) that sold for $615,000, Ernest L. Blumenschein’s Eagle Nest
Lake (est. $300/500,000) that sold for $471,000, Maynard Dixon’s Canyon Ranch (est. $150/250,000) that sold for $325,000, and
Thomas Moran’s A Sand Storm,acoma, New Mexico (est. $150/250,000) that went well over its estimates when it sold for $399,000.
Other strong Western works included a Maxfield Parrish landscape, Hot Springs:yavapai Co.arizona (est. $250/350,000) that sold for $375,000, Alfred Jacob Miller’s Hunting Elk by Moonlight (est. $150/250,000) that sold for $200,000, and Oscar E. Berninghaus’ Crowd at Horse Race—taos, N. Mex (est. $600/800,000) that closed at $495,000.
Along with Western art, impressionism also had a strong showing with Frederick Carl Freiseke’s Gray Day on the River (est. $1.5/2.5 million) selling for nearly $1.7 million, and Mary Cassatt’s portrait of her nephew Master Robert Kelso Cassatt (est. $500/700,000) selling for more than $1.4 million. Norman Rockwell had two works in the top 10: Two Old Men and Dog: Hunting (est. $300/500,000) that closed for $855,000, and No Credit Given (Shopkeeper and Two Children) (est. $300/500,000) that ended at $771,000.A bronze by Paul Manship,
Diana (est. $400/600,000), outperformed its estimates when it sold for $975,000, and a Max Weber cubist work Imaginary Portrait of awoman (est. $400/500,000) sold for $795,000.
Other standouts were a Grandma Moses work, Sugaring Time, that more than tripled its high estimate when it sold for $519,000; and Georgia O’keeffe’s Shell, which soared past its $1 million high estimate when it finished at more than $1.5 million.the following night, on November 14, another O’keeffe, Yellow Sweet Peas, sold for $4.4 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale. Kayla Carlsen, Sotheby’s vice president of American art, says that the American art sale proved that “big, key, important names still sell very well.”
She adds, “The market is generally feeling very buoyant.we had a lot of people in the room, and everything came in right on target,” Carlsen says.“we saw a lot of strength in the big names like Bierstadt, Cassatt and O’keeffe, but also saw strength in American sculpture and illustration.”