Bonhams’ California & Western Art Sale
Los Angeles, CA
On August 4, Bonhams will present its summer California & Western Art sale in Los Angeles. While the sale will feature work from prominent Western artists— including Joe Beeler, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, William Penhallow Henderson, Edward Borein and Cyrus Dallin—many of the highlights are works that were inspired by or painted in California.
“The market for California works has always been pretty great, and we hope it continues. The collectors who admire this category see it through year to year, and through thick and thin,” says Scot Levitt, director of fine arts at Bonhams. “And this year we have some great selections from many of the top artists who were here in California painting.”
Highlights include Granville Redmond’s
Poppies and Lupine (est. $100/150,000), a landscape showing the hilly countryside covered in wildflowers; Theodore Wores’
Cypress Point, Monterey, California (est. $15/25,000), showing a coastal view; and William Wendt’s 1920 oil California Landscape
(est. $40/60,000), which shows a magnificent view looking down into a valley.
The sale will also have several Hawaiian works from Robert Eskridge, including Hukilau,
a 1940 oil showing workers gathering fish from large nets that are stretched out on a beach with houses in the distance. The work is done in a modernist style that should appeal to fans of Southwest modernism, particularly some of the work that was coming out of Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the early 20th century.
Other artists in the sale include Edgar Payne, Armin Hansen, Arthur Grover Rider, John Gamble, John Frost and many others.
Bidding will start at 1 p.m. on August 4, and although the auctioneer will be in Los Angeles conducting the live sale, bidding will take place online. The artwork can be previewed in the Los Angeles gallery by appointment. The sale is expected to have 160 lots.
“With the ongoing health crisis, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to see the art, but also feel safe in the gallery,”
Levitt says. “As for the online part of the sale, bidders are getting more and more use to it, and that’s something we saw as far back as five or so years ago. We expect to see that trend continue.”