Courtesy Christie's

Milton Avery's "Sketching by the Sea" (1944) more than doubled its high estimate at Christie's, going for $2,210,500.

Courtesy Sotheby's

Grandma Moses's "Country Fair" (1950) was the highlight of the Sotheby's sale, earning $1,082,500.

Milton Avery Albert Bierstadt Edward Henry Potthast Thomas Cole Grandma Moses Thomas Hart Benton Fairfield Porter Thomas Eakins

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With hedge-funders largely out of the picture, price levels at the Christie’s sale on May 20 reverted to where they were in the early ’90s. Of the 141 lots offered, 88 found buyers, resulting in a $16,820,400 sale total that fell far short of the auction’s pre-sale estimate of $20.5 million to $30.7 million. Sell-through rates were 62 percent by lot and 70 percent by value.

The most expensive sale occurred early on in the session, when a modestly sized Milton Avery, Sketching by the Sea, appeared on the block after more than 60 years off the market. The 1944 canvas, which pictures two figures busily drafting their seaside surroundings, more than doubled its high estimate, going for $2,210,500.

The session’s second biggest seller, Albert Bierstadt’s undated Oregon Trail, came up a few minutes later. Though the house had high hopes for the work, which it lavished with the most expensive estimate of the sale, $2–3 million, the frontier scene was settled at $1,762,500.

Holding steady throughout the sale was demand for bronze sculpture. Of the three whip-cracking horsemen by Frederic Remington on offer, two sold. The Cheyenne made $266,500 (est. 250,000–350,000), while the more modestly estimated The Bronco Buster (est. $50–70,000) exceeded expectations, bringing $98,500. Painters’ invocations of the West also fared well, especially works by Henry F. Farny, the only artist whose name appears twice in the sale’s top 10. Farny’s sharply detailed gouaches, Indian Encampment (1892) and Mountain Pass (1894) (both est. $400–600,000), went to the same bidder, for a combined $941,000.

Although art from the Wild West certainly pushed price boundaries, works with Yankee origins were not to be discounted. A lively bidding war broke out over George Bellows’s richly stroked depiction of Maine’s Monhegan Island, Cloud Shadows, which sold for $962,500 (est. $600–800,000). Thomas Cole’s View in Kaaterskill Clove, 1826 — a luminous tribute to the Catskills in autumn — did even better, bringing $1,022,500 (est. $800,000–1.2 million) from Caldwell Gallery of Manulius, New York.

The Mount Vernon Ladies Association continued to satiate its appetite for works rich with the first president’s legacy. For Eastman Johnson’s 1857 painting The Old Mount Vernon, the institution paid $662,500 (est. $600–800,000), a sum that is strangely identical to the amount it laid out for the Charles Peale Polk portrait of George Washington it bought at the Christie’s Americana sale in January.

Pictures that may have been too imitative of modern European styles, like the Nabis-wannabe forest scene by Edward Alfred Cucuel (est. $50–70,000) and Richard Edward Miller’s impersonation of Degas’s Parisian jaunts in Café de Nuit (est. 700,000–1 million), didn’t pique any interest, whereas American Impressionism aroused enthusiasm. William James Glackens’s serene and sunny Wickford Harbor, Rhode Island (1909), for instance, sold for $458,500 (est. $200–300,000), and Edward Henry Potthast’s Wading brought $386,500 (est. $200–300,000) from a bidder in the room.

Many of the buyers, however, did not show their faces on the day of the sale. “No one came to town,” notes Eli Wilner, the antique frame dealer who loaned nearly 50 frames to the Christie’s and Sotheby’s sessions and who did attend the sales. In some cases, absentee bidders even seemed to be rewarded for not being there. For instance, the buyer of Mary Cassatt’s study Two Mothers and a Child in a Boat (1910) got it for $25,000, well under its $30,000 low estimate. And another no-show really hit the jackpot, paying just $338,500 for a rather somber portrait of the 19th-century philanthropist famous for his work in education reform, Robert C. Ogden, that was estimated to go for between $400,000 and $600,000. The work was of three by Thomas Eakins being deaccessioned by Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum. One, Study for William Rush and His Model (circa 1908), made $122,500 (est. $80–120,000). A third did not sell.

Pre-sale bidding may have loosened up the reserves on certain lots, but the practice certainly didn’t help the sale’s entertainment factor. “There’s no action in the room,” said dealer Maxwell Davidson. But along with his father, which whom he shares his name and his New York gallery, Davidson managed to generate some in-house excitement, paying $146,500 for Edmund C. Tarbell’s Hansom Cab in London (1886), estimated at $150–250,000. Later in the sale, the powerhouse pair relocated to the front row to go after a Milton Avery, Melon Vendor (1946–47), which they won for $350,500 (est. $250–350,000).

Bidding got more brisk the following day at the Sotheby’s auction, which offered a slightly more refined selection of 107 lots. Sotheby’s wound up nearly hitting its pre-sale estimate range of $17–25 million, with 66 lots totaling $15,303,125, for rates, similar to those at Christie's, of 61.7 percent by lot and 73.2 percent by value.

The top seller was a wintry Paris view painted by Childe Hassam in 1887 in a palette of ruddy white, hazy gray, and rosy pink. The serene scene had been embroiled in a controversy for over a year; it was among the works that CNET founder Halsey Minor won at various Sotheby’s auctions last May and then refused to pay for, due to his allegations that the house had not disclosed interest in some of his purchases. This go-around, Paris, Winter Day, 1887 brought $2,322,500 (est. $1.5–2.5 million), the highest price paid for a piece of American art all week, though far less than the $3,961,000 Minor pledged to pay for it last May. The house’s other major Hassam offering, a 1901 marine scene of ships docked in Newport, Rhode Island, was also big seller, surpassing its estimate of $500,000 to $700,000 to bring in $902,500.a

Although a pair of ambitiously estimated canvases by Thomas Hart Benton failed to attract buyers, smaller works by the artist had better luck: Benton’s Three Figures (1914–15) brought $110,500 (est. $100–150,000) and a later, more abstract work, Fantasy (1946), made $59,375 (est. $25–35,000). Other works that broke estimates included a Fairfield Porter painting of a flowering meadow, which brought an unexpected $158,500 — more than triple its high estimate of $50,000.

Sotheby’s also managed to make the biggest sculpture sale of the week when Harriet Whitney Frismuth’s 83½-inch bronze of a gracefully posed nude woman, The Vine (1923), brought $962,500 against an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. It was a new record for the artist, who also sold well in the Christie’s session.

But the real excitement came when the sale’s cover lot hit the block. Country Fair was done in 1950 by the famed, self-taught artist Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses, whose busy rural scenes seemed to be the flavor of the week, not only at Christie’s and Sotheby’s but at Bonhams’s sale on May 20 as well. The large picture was estimated to go for between $700,000 and $900,000 — a rather ambitious expectation given that her paintings typically register in the under-$500,000 range. The salesroom was tense as the lot opened at $450,000, but anxiety gave way to intrigue as the bids climbed past the sale’s low estimate of $700,000, with two contenders — one in the room and one on the phone — vying for the work. Ultimately, the painting sold to the phone for $1,082,500. The underbidder — the same white-haired gentleman who had lost the race for Walter Ufer’s portrait of a Taos, New Mexico, man that sold for $752,500 (est. $400–600,000) — was rumored to be a dealer buying for the forward-minded billionaire T. Boone Pickens.

Perhaps Pickens is extending his personally funded bailouts to the art market? That would give us all something to look forward to. A fearless cowboy with a twinkle in his eye, saddlebags full of cash, and a savvy dealer in his stable may be just what the category of American art needs to get out of the doldrums.