Heritage Auctions’ Art of the West Month-long Online Auction
Dallas, TX
On July 31, Heritage Auctions will launch its Art of the West Month-long Online Auction on its website with more than 100 paintings and sculpture in the time-honored genre available. Collectors can peruse the site and bid on pieces until the sale’s final day on August 21. “We’ve found that our online auctions have been tremendously successful and our buyers are very much used to buying with the online platform,” says Alissa Ford, director of Western art at Heritage. “For me it was an easy decision to bring in great things and have people bid online.”
The sale, as Ford explains, is made up of “big names, but affordable prices,” making it an auction that is desirable to collectors of all levels. Pieces by artists such as Glenna Goodacre, Cyrus E. Dallin, Charles M. Russell, Olaf Wieghorst and G. Harvey will be featured in the sale. “Art should be accessible to buyers at all levels—not solely for the elite status. With no reserves, this sale is an opportunity to build your collection,” Ford says.
Among the highlights in the sale are 24 works from the Brinkman collection. Included in the offering is Henry Balkin’s Tony and his Horses (est. $4/6,000). “He’s very much known for his candy-colored palette and kind of glistening works,” says Ford. This painting also shows off his drawing abilities and his training in the classic Barbizon school style. Also from Brinkman are G. Harvey’s The Runaways, Glenna Goodacre’s Fantasy and Allan Houser’s Peyote Song.
Goodacre is also represented in the auction by her 1978 bronze Basket Dancers, which is estimated at $5,000 to $7,000. “There’s also a Goodacre painting, which you don’t see all that often,” says Ford. Other bronzes include Houser’s Plains Drummer (est. $3/5,000) and Dallin’s tabletop Appeal to Great Spirit at $3,000 to $5,000.
“We brought in a collection of six paintings by Oleg Stavrowsky,” says Ford. “He’s a completely underrated artist. Two are $6,000 to $8,000. They’re absolutely gorgeous.” One of the pieces is Herefords, measuring 39½ by 83½ inches, while another one of his works, A Ride in the Country, just shy of 32 inches wide, is expected to sell between $4,000 and $6,000.
Another sale highlight is Wieghorst’s Calico (Ghost Town), which the auction house describes as “a quiet landscape rendered through bright sunlight and vivid colors that offers a clear glimpse into what drew the artist to the American West, which he began to admire shortly after arriving from his native Denmark in 1918.” The painting has a presale estimate of $3,000 to $5,000.
“During this period when we are spending more and more time in our homes, I find that art is an essential element to our overall happiness—a portal into our past, a gateway to historical events and a wild story teller,” Ford says. “These pieces are reminders of the beauty in the world and the strength and courage our ancestors had to get us to where we are today.”