Auction Review: American Paintings

Christie’s

141 lots offered
$16,820,400 sold total
30 percent unsold by value
38 percent unsold by lot

Sotheby’s

107 lots offered
$15,303,125 sold total
26.8 percent unsold by value
38.3 percent unsold by lot

Bonhams

51 lots offered
$2,621,160 sold total
22 percent unsold by value
38.5 percent unsold by lot

July/August 2009 Auction Reviews

Impressionist & Modern Art

Contemporary Art

Bonhams

Lempertz

Nagel

Camard

Christie's

Bukowskis

Sotheby's

Dorotheum

Sloans & Kenyon

Eldred's

Skinner

Milton Avery Edward Henry Potthast Thomas Cole George Bellows Frederic Remington Frederic Edwin Church Henry F Farny Childe Hassam

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With hedge-funders largely out of the picture, prices at the Christie’s sale on May 20 reverted to early-’90s levels, and the session’s $16,820,400 total fell far short of the expected $20.5 million to $30.7 million. Of the 141 lots offered, only 88 found buyers, for a sell-through rate of 62 percent by lot and 70 percent by value.

The sale’s high point occurred early, when the modestly sized Milton Avery Sketching by the Sea appeared on the block after more than 60 years off the market. The 1944 painting of two figures busily drawing on a billow-buffeted rock more than doubled its high estimate to bring $2,210,500.

Throughout the sale demand for bronzes held steady. Of three whip-cracking horsemen by Frederic Remington on offer, two sold: The Cheyenne (est. $250-350,000) for $266,500 and the more modestly estimated Bronco Buster (est. $50-70,000) for $98,500. Invocations of the West in two dimensions also fared well, especially those by Henry F. Farny, the only artist with two works 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.

If cowboys and Indians held center stage, Yankee subjects were not to be discounted. After a lively bidding war, George Bellows’s richly stroked depiction of Maine’s Monhegan Island, Cloud Shadows (est. $600-800,000), sold for $962,500, while Thomas Cole’s luminous View in Kaaterskill Clove, 1826 (est. $800,000-1.2 million), fetched $1,022,500 from the Caldwell Gallery of Manlius, New York. And the Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast, renowned for his Northern coastal scenes, was redeemed after the crash of three of his paintings with six-figure estimates at Doyle the previous day, when Wading (est. $200-300,000) sailed to $386,500.

Although the Potthast sold to a bidder in the room, many lots went to absentee buyers. "No one came to town," says Eli Wilner, the New York dealer of antique frames, who loaned nearly 50 of his wares to the Christie’s and Sotheby’s sessions and did attend. Among those present in the Christie’s salesroom were the father-and-son team behind New York’s Maxwell Davidson Gallery, who generated some in-house thrills when they went after Milton Avery’s Melon Vendor, 1946-47 (est. $250-350,000), winning it for $350,500.

Bidding was brisk at Sotheby’s the following day for the session’s slightly more refined selection. Nevertheless, the house generated numbers similar to those at Christie’s: It earned just $15,303,125 — well under its conservative low estimate of $17 million — on sales of 66 out of 107 offerings, for sell-through rates of 61.7 percent by lot and 73.2 percent by value.

The star, in both monetary and dramatic-narrative terms, was Childe Hassam’s 1887 Paris, Winter Day (est. $1.5-2.5 million). The serene scene, painted in a palette of whites, grays and pinks, had been embroiled for more than a year in a raging controversy as one of the works that CNET founder Halsey Minor won at various Sotheby’s auctions last May and then refused to pay for because of the house’s alleged failure to disclose its interest in some of them. This go-around, the picture brought $2,322,500, the highest price of the week, although dramatically less than the $3,961,000 Minor had pledged for it last May. The house’s other major Hassam offering, a 1901 marine scene, also earned top dollar, surpassing its estimate of $500,000 to $700,000 to bring $902,500.

Sotheby’s snagged the week’s gold medal in sculpture as well, when The Vine, Harriet Whitney Frismuth’s 1923 83½-inch bronze of a gracefully posed nude woman (est. $400-600,000), brought $962,500 — a new record for the artist, who had sold well in the Christie’s session, too.

It was Grandma Moses, however, who generated the real excitement. The famed folk artist’s busy rural scenes had inspired practically all the action at Bonhams on May 20, although that session’s top price, $1,274,000, went to Frederic Edwin Church’s 1874 Twilight in the Tropics (A Tropical Moonlight). Bonhams offered four works by Moses at modest estimates, and three of them sparked heated bidding wars, with Richard Lynch and Howard Shaw, of New York’s Hammer Galleries, chasing nearly all of them and managing to bag just one: A Fine Gobbler, 1948 (est. $30-50,000), for which they paid $64,050.

At Sotheby’s, Moses was represented by Country Fair, 1950 (est. $700-900,000). That estimate seemed rather ambitious, considering that her paintings typically fetch less than $500,000. The salesroom was tense as the bidding opened at $450,000, but anxiety gave way to breathless excitement as the bids climbed past the lot’s reserve, with two contenders — one in the room and one on the phone — vying for the painting. Ultimately, it sold to the phone for $1,082,500. The underbidder — who had earlier lost out on Walter Ufer’s The Red Moccasins (est. $400-600,000), which sold for $752,500 — was a white-haired gentleman rumored to be buying for the flag-waving wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens.

"American Paintings" originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July/August 2009 Table of Contents.