On the Market: A Landmark American Indian Sale

Landmark American Indian Sale

Photo courtesy Christie's

Egyptian painted wood mummy portrait of a woman, Roman period, ca. 55-80 A.D.

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Collector Robert Lebel, the writer and biographer of Marcel Duchamp, was a friend of surrealist poet André Breton, and both men shared a passion for Eskimo art, which they collected during their exile in America in the 1940s. They bought mainly at the New York gallery of Julius Carlebach, which Max Ernst discovered when he stopped in to try to buy a Haida spoon. When Lebel, Breton and other surrealists were collecting this type of art in the ’40s, it was virtually unknown to the market. They introduced it to Paris when they returned after World War II.

The collection auctioned off last week included six Pueblo masks from Arizona and New Mexico, as well as one Kwakiutl mask from British Columbia and nine Yup’ik Eskimo masks. Yu’pik masks from southern Alaska are made for propitiatory festivals associated with hunting and fishing and include depictions of a wide variety of beings, both natural and supernatural. Those were the stars of the sale.

Seven of the nine Yu’pik masks were bought by Canadian dealer Donald Ellis, who said that there will never be another sale like this one. The remaining two were preempted by the French government for the recently opened Musée du Quai Branly. It took a mask in the image of a diving bird for €363,388 (est: €120-150,000), and a wood mask representing a half-walrus/half-caribou for €599,266 (est: €120-150,000).

Among the masks that Ellis bought—both for clients and his own inventory—was a wooden mask representing a stylized human face, for which he paid €540,298, more than five times the high estimate of €100,000; and a mask in the shape of a bird’s head, for €269,036 (est :€80,000-100,000).

In addition to their startling beauty, the Lebel masks have an illustrious provenance. Many of the pieces are well known, having been widely published and displayed in famous exhibitions at the Musée Guimet and Centre Pompidou in Paris, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The dispersal of Lebel’s collection marks the end of sales from the period when tribal arts entered France.

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More Antiquities Auctions:

A very strong appetite for antiquities was shown by the results of the December sales of Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York.

Sotheby’s sale on Dec. 6 was 99.3 percent sold by value with 169 of the 173 lots offered finding buyers and many lots far exceeding their high pre-sale estimates. Quality is, of course, an important factor, but so too is provenance. It is worth noting that every piece at both houses included its origin in the catalogue description. No longer are they selling, what one dealer calls, “found in the ground stuff.”

The star at Sotheby’s was an Egyptian serpentine block statue of a man dating from the 29th/30th Dynasty (350-450 B.C.E), which sold to a European collector for $856,000 (est: $350-450,000). The piece came from the collection of the late Dutch collector Frits Philips, chairman of Royal Philips Electronics NV, who inherited it from his father. It had been exhibited only once, in Amsterdam in 1938, and the only publication was a line drawing in 1957.

Another star was a large and beautiful marble head of a goddess (ca. late 2nd/early 1st century B.C.E.) that attracted many bidders before finally selling to the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta for $486,400 (est: $125-175,000).

At Christie’s the following day, the most spectacular lot was an Egyptian painted sycamore fig wood sarcophagus complete with the mummy, dating from the around 990-940 B.C.E. Carrying an unpublished estimate but predicted at $1 million, it sold for $1.14 million to the Merrin Gallery, which bid for an American collector. Many thought that the piece would have gone higher, but in fact, there was only one bidder against the reserve. (Perhaps some buyers are tuned off by body parts.)

What was most notable about the Christie’s auction was the high price point paid for lots that bore modest estimates, such as an Egyptian painted wood mummy portrait of a woman (ca. 55-70 C.E.) that soared up to $262,400 (est: $40-50,000); and a Roman alabaster cinerarium (ca. 1st century C.E.) that fetched $189,000 (est: $25-35,000).