Hindman’s Arts of the American West
Denver, CO
On November 7, Hindman will present its next Arts of the American West auction with more than 400 lots of Western and Native American artwork coming to the market. Approximately one-third of the sale will be dedicated solely to the Western pieces, with paintings from Joseph Henry Sharp, Emil
Bisttram, Edgar Payne, Harold Von Schmidt and Nick Eggenhoffer being among the items available. “The other two-thirds of the auction is a very nice selection of American Indian art and artifacts including Navajo rugs, beadwork, pottery and Southwestern/american Indian jewelry,” the auction house shares.
Leading the Western lots are Sharp’s 1931 painting Ditch Workers, which is expected to sell between $50,000 and $70,000, and the 1960 painting Taos Mountain, by Bisttram, estimated to achieve $18,000 to $24,000. In the contemporary portion of the sale, collectors will make note of an untitled panoramic landscape
by Phoenix-based artist Ed Mell. The work, which features the artist’s signature abstracted shapes and bold desert colors, has an estimate of $12,000 to $18,000. A piece by Robert Daughters, who passed in 2013, is also arriving at auction. Titled Long House Path Bandelier (est. $3/5,000), his painting shows a dirt pathway along the edge of steep canyon.
Contemporary Native American paintings and sculpture are also noteworthy in the sale. Leading the group is Allan Houser’s 59-inch bronze He Will Be Home Soon being sold to benefit the Albuquerque Museum Foundation. The work has a presale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. Kevin Red Star’s Bad Bear and His Medicine Shield also hits the market with a price of $12,000 to $18,000.
Artwork from Colorado is also prominent in the sale with seven works by Vance Kirkland hitting the auction block. Kirkland’s
artistic output ranged from realism to abstract expressionist mixtures of oil as well as textured dot paintings in oil. The seven pieces mark the largest grouping of the artist’s works to come to auction at the same time.
Hugh Grant, executive of the Vance Kirkland Estate and the founding director and curator of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art in Denver, says, “All seven of the Kirkland works offered by Hindman, from periods 1, 3 and 5, are excellent examples within their series, as follows.”
Several works from Colorado landscape artist Charles Partridge Adams also are available for bids including Yellowstone Canyon (est. $6/8,000) and Haystacks – Mount Meeker and Longs Peak near Longmont, Colorado. There also will be a selection of works benefitting the A.R. Mitchell Museum available during the sale.
“This sale in particular represents the most diverse and varied offerings we have had in the past few years,” says Maron Hindman, the auction house’s vice president of West and Southwest. “We are very excited about the broad spectrum of genres and price points and think our bidders are going to consider it a real barn burner.”
A preview of the Arts of the American West sale will take place November 2 at the Denver showroom.