NEW YORK—At Sotheby’s American Paintings sale yesterday in New York, Norman Rockwell’s Homecoming Marine [lot 45] sold for $9.2 million (buyer’s premium included for this and all sales figures below). The painting, once owned by eccentric businessman and presidential candidate Ross Perot, nearly doubled its high-end estimate ($3-5 million).

The homey work, according to sources at the sale, was bought by Ray Waterhouse, of Waterhouse & Dodd, the prestigious London dealer of 19th- and 20th-century paintings (presumably on behalf of a client). Waterhouse was also reportedly the buyer of the next most expensive lot: Andrew Wyeth’s South Cushing [lot 135]; the horse portrait went for $4.38 million (est. $2-3 million).

Waterhouse & Dodd declined to confirm that its leader was the buyer of these two works.

Another Rockwell painting also hit the seven-figure mark and far exceeded its estimate: the wonderfully titled Hoodlum Street [lot 97] sold for $1.36 million; its estimate was $700-900,000. It was consigned by the estate of Ira and Stacia Contant.

More than tripling its high estimate was Thomas Hart Benton’s Keith Farm, Chilmark [lot 125], which sold for $1.808 million (est. $350-550,000), delivering a nice boost to the endowment of the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass., which had owned the painting.

Other notable sales at the auction: Marsden Hartley’s Storm Down Pine Point Way, Old Orchard Beach [lot 139], which sold for $2.256 million, toward the lower end of its estimate range ($2-3 million); and a John Singleton Copley portrait [lot 14] of the Founding Father with a flourish for signatures, John Hancock. The painting more than doubled its high-end estimate of $800,000, selling for $1.696 million. It was consigned by a California charitable foundation.

Even lesser-known artists sold well: Francis A Silva’s On the Hudson, Nyack [lot 11] went for $1.472 million (est. $600-800,000). Maria Oakey Dewing’s Rose Garden [lot 40] sold for $2.032 million (est. $2-3 million).