Expectations were high for Christie’s November 29 sale of American paintings, drawings and sculpture, projected to bring in $133 million, the highest presale estimate for the category. The auction was supposed to be led by paintings consigned by Randolph College, in Virginia, including George Bellowss masterful Men of the Docks, from 1912, expected to fetch up to $35 million. Days before the auction, however, courts temporarily blocked Randolph’s sale, and the Bellows, an Edward Hicks and some other pictures were yanked.

Despite the late-breaking withdrawal, the mood was as upbeat at Christie’s as at Sotheby’s. The salesrooms were jammed with unusually large crowds of dealers and collectors. Notable among the latter was Texas supermarket billionaire Charles Butt, who paid $1,161,000 for Winslow Homers 1880 watercolor Boating Boys at Gloucester (est. $300–500,000) at Christie’s. The houses registered combined sales of $136.5 million, with 35 lots each going for more than $1 million and records set for 18 artists, including Milton Avery, Charles Burchfield and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Dealers say the strong results were achieved in spite of average offerings. “They weren’t the highest-quality sales,” says Santa Fe dealer Aaron Payne. “Yet the numbers and attendance were high. The market is very healthy.”

The auctions lacked stellar Hudson River, Impressionist and modernist examples, but masterworks in other categories boosted prices. “Illustration art and Western art seem to be the strength of the market,” says New York art adviser Kay Childs. “That’s what took off.”

Illustrator Norman Rockwell dominated at Sotheby’s on November 28. A year before, the house had sold his Breaking Home Ties, from 1954, for a record $15.4 million. This season, it stocked its sale with 13 works by the artist. Three wound up among its top 10 lots, the priciest being Gary Cooper as “The Texan” (est. $1.5–2.5 million). The painting, a Saturday Evening Post cover from 1930 depicting Cooper, in cowboy attire, having his lips daubed red by a makeup artist, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder for $5,921,000. It had sold in the 1980s for $250,000, according to Judy Goffman Cutler, of New York’s American Illustrators Gallery.

“Prices have skyrocketed, and the thing that generates interest is money,” says her husband, Laurence Cutler, cofounder of the National Museum of American Illustration, in Newport, Rhode Island.

Colorful Milton Avery paintings also elicited heavy bidding. The Reader and the Listener, a 1945 picture exhibiting the artist’s Matisse-like incised markings (est. $700–900,000), fetched a record $2,505,000. Consigned by an anonymous Midwest foundation, it had been on loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1978 to 2002.

Christie’s sale, which made the firm’s highest total ever in this category, benefited from the inclusion of 10 lots of mostly Western art from a private American collection, identified by dealers as that of the Arizona-based Michael Greenbaum, author of a book on Frederic Remington. Seven of the top 10 lots came from this consignor, who had received a guarantee.

“Western pictures did incredibly well,” says Marc Porter, president of Christie’s North America. “That doesn’t surprise me, because the material is rare, plus anyone in those oil-patch states is doing incredibly well.”

Works by Remington made particularly strong showings. The Dallas dealer Bill Burford, of Texas Art Gallery,purchased The Signal (If Skulls Could Speak), a dramatic 1900 portrait of a Native American on the back of a rearing horse (est. $4–6 million), for $4,409,000. The Cheyenne, a 21-inch-tall 1901 bronze, also of a Native American on horseback (est. $3–5 million), went to a phone bidder for $3,177,000.

The Denver dealer Steve Good, who is known to bid for the Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, bought Arthur Fitzwilliam Taits 1952 painting The Check—Keep Your Distance, depicting a battle between pioneers and Native Americans (est. $800,000–1 million), for a record $2,841,000. He also won Emmanuel Leutzes Last of the Mohicans (est. $700,000–1 million), which was painted sometime after the 1826 publication of James Fenimore Coopers novel of the same title, for $2,169,000.

Ninety-year-old Andrew Wyeth confirmed his status as a market favorite. The Intruder, a spare 1971 depiction of a dog on a rock, brought $5,753,000 (est. $3–5 million), making it Christie’s top lot.

Despite the strong numbers, nearly a quarter of the lots in each auction went unsold. Second-rate canvases by Mary Cassatt and William Merritt Chase generated no interest, and a lackluster selection of works from the Orlando, Florida, collectors Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence, guaranteed by Christie’s, fared poorly. “Ordinarily there is a lot of sopping up at the bottom end,” says the Vermont private dealer James Maroney. “There wasn’t much sopping up going on.”

"American Paintings" originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's February 2008 Table of Contents.