Record Breaking Sale
On May 3, Heritage Auctions hosted its highest grossing American Art auction in company history
Illustration art continued to reign supreme during Heritage Auctions’ May 3 American Art Auction, as every painting that landed in the top 10 was from the category.the leader of the day was N.c.wyeth, with two of his pieces becoming the No. 1 and No. 2 lots, while two paintings by Norman Rockwell followed as the day’s third- and fourth-highest sellers.as a whole, the auction had strong
bidding and was a recordbreaker for the auction house. “This is the highest grossing American art sale in our company’s history,” says Aviva Lehmann, Heritage Auction’s vice president and American art director.“with a 90 percent sell-through rate by value, this auction is a clear indicator that Heritage Auctions is firmly rooted as a leader in the field of American art.”
In the sale, a number of collections hit the market, with illustrations from Andrew J. Sordoni, being of particular interest with buyers.the two Wyeth pieces that lead the auction were from his esteemed grouping of 12 works offered.topping the day was “I am Sir Launcelot du Lake, King Ban’s son of Benwick, and knight of the Round Table” (est. $800/1,200,000), which was an interior book illustration from the 1917 book The
Boy’s King Arthur: Sir Thomas Malory’s History of King Arthur and His Nights of the Round Table by Sidney Lanier.the painting, which Lehmann says had competitive bidding, sold for $615,000.
The other work, Mr. Cassidy…saw a crimson rider sweep down upon him… Heralded by a blazing .41”, Bar-20 Range Yards, Park VII – Cassidy at Cactus, featured the fictitious cowboy Hopalong Cassidy—a favorite character of the collector.according to Lehmann the nature of the work married the categories of illustration and Western art, and eventually sold to a collector of illustration for $555,000.
Norman Rockwell’s The Night Before Christmas (Santa Peeping over Chair at Sleeping
Child), which was the cover for Literary Digest magazine on December 22, 1923, hit the auction block from the collection of Jack and Martha Campbell of Houston.the piece, which depicted Santa Claus looking over a chair at a sleeping child and his dog, was Rockwell’s last cover for the magazine. It achieved its low estimate of $500,000. Selling squarely within estimate, at $399,000, was Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post 1954 cover study for Girl at Mirror (est. $300/500,000).The work, as Lehmann describes, was well executed and was done with great detail for a study. Another Saturday Evening
Post cover performing well in the auction was John Philip Falter’s Snow Day.“it feels like an easel painting, and it has a great narrative,” says Lehmann of the painting that was fresh to the market from the family of Kenneth Stuart, a longtime art director at the Saturday Evening Post who lived next door to Falter and was gifted the painting by the artist. It sold for nearly triple its high estimate of $120,000 at $325,000.
The sale was also of significance as there were seven artist auction records set during the day. One of which became the eighthhighest grossing painting of the auction:amos Sewell’s Kids Playing Cowboy. The work, which achieved $225,000 against a presale estimate of $50,000 to $70,000, had interest prior to the sale but when the bidding started “it was fevered, competitive bidding on the phone and in the room.” Other notable sales included J.C. Leyendecker’s New Year’s Baby that sold for $275,000, which bested its presale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000, and Judah Levasseur’s Fishing on the Lake Manaqua, Nicaragua: A Pair of Works
(est. $40/$60,000), from circa 1840, that became an auction record for the artist at $137,500. Milton Avery’s circa 1940 Untitled (Landscape) was a small, but early work, which sold above estimate at $112,500.