John Moran Auctioneers’ California & American Fine Art Sale
Monrovia, CA
All things Southwest will take center stage during John Moran Auctioneers’ upcoming California & American Fine Art Sale on April 19 at 2 p.m. There will be California landscapes, desert visits and Old West imagery among the most sought-after items hitting the block. The sale will be tightly curated at around 100 lots, with the Western items being among the most anticipated in this spring sale.
“We are featuring works by Nicolai Fechin and Frank Tenney Johnson that are really prominent,” says Morgana Blackwelder, the auction house’s director of fine art. “I think they are A-list items to add to any sort of Western art collection.”
The Fechin work is an untitled painting featuring a road through a desert landscape, likely Taos, New Mexico, where the artist lived for a period of his life. The piece, as Blackwelder explains, depicts “winding paths through this mountain-scape. It’s a really big standout.” The painting, which also highlights the artist’s signature vibrant brushstrokes in reds, blues and browns, is estimated to sell between $150,000 and $200,000.
Johnson’s Cowboy Race (est. $60/80,000) is a field study for his painting Dust Stained Riders.
Blackwelder calls the work impactful. She adds, “It has really broad brushstrokes that really allow the audience to feel the movement.”
Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel presents another Southwestern image with her work Walpi,
On The First Mesa. The painting, estimated at $3,000 to $5,000, depicts the Hopi village of Walpi that sits on the narrow edge of First Mesa. As the auction house explains, “The almost monochromatic dwelling and hillside lead the eye to the brightly colored mother and child sharing a tender moment in the foreground.”
There are two desert butte scenes that are also notable in the sale: George K. Brandiff’s 1933 painting Butte – New Mexico (est. $15/20,000) and Towering Butte by Hanson Duvall Puthuff that is expected to sell between $8,000 and $12,000.
California Impressionist paintings are always collector favorites in the sales—particularly
because of the auction house being located in Monrovia, California. The standout piece in the category is This is My Own, My Native Land, a 1932 painting by William Wendt that takes its title from a line in Sir Water Scott’s poem The
Lay of the Last Minstrel. Wendt, who was born in Germany and settled in California, had a true admiration and dedication to his adopted home state. The auction house explains, “That love of place is rendered in fond detail in this work, with the freshly tilled slopes hugging the hillside dotted with live oak trees with just a peak of the foothills off in the distance.” The work has an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000.
Franz Bischoff is represented by his coastal painting A Deep Cove – Balboa Rocks, which shows waves crashing against sharp rock formations. It is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. “When collectors think of his work, it tends to lean toward many other subject matters, with his floral still lifes really being the top of his market,” says Blackwelder. “You have a work like this that is really impactful.
He’s applying the same subtleties he applies in still lifes into this coastal scene. It’s a bit more atypical…but it would be a lovely addition that doesn’t come to the market very often.”