Smooth Selling at Christie's

NEW YORK—The last week of January is relatively quiet for auction houses in New York, which makes it an ideal time for Christie’s to stage its first maritime sale of the year—a tiny blip on the art market radar, but huge fun for collectors of seafaring art.

“It’s a good time to sell maritime because we’re not overshadowed by the bigger sales,” said Marie Kotsonis, head of sales in the Maritime Department. “We get the exhibition space and the proper press coverage, so we do very well.”

This year’s sale fell on January 30, a wet, blustery day perfect for swashbuckling fantasies. The sale totaled $2.4 million, with 68 percent of the 359 lots on offer sold. That doesn’t quite stack up to last year’s $3.7 million total and 73 percent of lots sold, but Kotsonis said Christie’s was pleased nonetheless, especially with the performance of the top three lots. Montague Dawson’s oil on canvas The American Brig Argus Engaging His Majesty's Sloop Pelican in British Waters, 14th August 1813 sold to a private collector for $229,000, capsizing the estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. Another Dawson oil on canvas, Night Suspect, followed closely at $241,000, going to the U.S. trade, squarely within its $150,000 to $250,000 estimate. William Bradford’s oil on canvas Sunset Glow on Sea and Land barreled past its $180,000 high estimate, selling for $217,000 to a private collector.

The sale offered everything from historically important paintings such as the Dawson and Bradford works to 20th-century yachting pictures, which Kotsonis said continue to grow in popularity, to sailor folk art and scrimshaw, including sought-after Sailor’s Valentines from the 19th century—wooden boxes with intricate shell designs that seafarers sent home to sweethearts (the Valentines later became a cottage industry on islands such as Barbados). Several important 17th-century ship models and a late-19th-century Tiffany & Co. humidor with nautical motifs in gilt brass and steel also added to the intrigue of this year’s offerings.

Kotsonis said buyers at Christie’s maritime sales are mostly private collectors from the United States and Canada. “They are the seasoned, traditional maritime collectors who have been building their collections for years,” she said. “But we do have newer, younger collectors that are just getting into the market now. They might be decorating their summer house on the water, or they might be buying yachting pictures because they have a yacht. Other people collect because they just like the historical significance—it’s sort of a romantic flashback.”