NEW YORK — At this week's auctions, sales of American paintings in New York reached their highest totals since the bottom fell out of the market in 2008. Christie’s turned in a respectable $27,198,600 on Wednesday, while Sotheby’s netted $34,787,625 on Thursday. More encouraging still, the buy-in rates — 23 percent at Christie’s and 12 percent at Sotheby’s — have not been seen in the category for several years. “We’re seeing a pronounced uptick in the marketplace,” says Eric Widing, deputy chair of the American paintings department at Christie's. “We’ve been waiting for it for some years now, and it’s finally happened.”
Both houses fielded new department heads, Elizabeth Sterling at Christie’s and Elizabeth Goldberg at Sotheby’s, who presented slimmed-down sales and reaped the rewards of careful editing and, for the most part, judicious pricing.
At Christie’s, the somewhat sparsely attended proceedings nevertheless got off to a crackling start with the $60,000 realized for Harriet Whitney Frishmuth’s cast-bronze Martha Lorber (1927) (est. $10–15,000), followed by a strong tranch of modernist works, including Milton Avery’s gangly yet charming Adolescent (1947) (est. $400–600,000), which at least five bidders chased to $1,022,500.
Mary Cassatt’s Sara Holding a Cat (ca. 1907–08) (est. $800–1,200,000), an intimate oil on canvas in which the artist’s exploration of her signature single-child theme reaches stylistic maturity, fetched a sale-high $2,546,500 from a gentleman on his cell phone seated at the back of the salesroom. The same man also claimed Boston School painter’s Frank Weston Benson’s tender Portrait of Gertrude Russell (1915) (est. $1–1.5 million) for a comparative bargain of $962,500.
Although surpassed in price by a classic Saturday Evening Post cover image by Norman Rockwell, Dreams of Long Ago (1927) (est. $2–3 million), which sold for $2,322,500, a sunlit Giverny picture by Frederick Carl Frieseke, Foxgloves (ca. 1912–13), generated heat, sending the work well above its $1.5-million high estimate to $2,210,500. The same occured with Robert Frederick Blum’s oil on canvas Venetian Gondoliers (ca. 1880–89) ($500–700,000), which was bagged by a collector for $1,142,500.
“We had a solid interest in the Cassatt going into the sale, but the hammer price of $2.2 million went beyond our expectations,” says Sterling. “That’s a great sign for the American Impressionist market, particularly when you couple it with the results we had for the Frieseke.”
The top 10 was rounded out by a Maxfield Parrish, a John Singer Sargent, and a pair of Georgia O’Keeffes: the pastel Lake George in Woods (1922) (est. $300–500,000), which soared to $902,500, and one of her first “bones” paintings from New Mexico, Deer Horns (1938) (est. $1.2–1.8 million), which New York private dealer Baird W. Ryan wrangled for $1,930,500.
Some of the highest-estimated lots, however, failed to gather enough steam for takeoff. In contrast to last November’s record-setting $5,346,500 sale of Oscar Bluemner’s Illusion of a Prairie, New Jersey (Red Farm at Pochuck) (1915), the artist’s similarly-hued Perth Amboy West (Tottenville) (1911) (est. $2–3 million) went nowhere. A luminous Fitz Henry Lane, Gloucester, Stage For Beach (1849) (est. $2–3 million), also sank. (Rumor has it the cows in the foreground may have turned buyers off.)
The Sotheby’s sale was buzzier, thanks in part to the sale’s headliner, the Edward Hopper oil Bridle Path (1939) (est. $5–7 million), put up by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to benefit its acquisitions fund. Depicting a trio of horseback riders galloping into one of Central Park’s distinctive tunnels, the sizable canvas attracted plenty of bidders, and ultimately sold to a private collector for $10,386,500, double its low estimate and the top-earning painting in the category since December 2007.
It was hardly the only bright spot. A splendid George Bellows sporting picture, Tennis at Newport (1920) (est. $5–7 million) — one of only four tennis scenes the artist produced, in verdant greens and lemon yellow — also attracted a pack of bidders. New York dealer Debra Force fought for the Bellows, but it ultimately went to an American collector for $7,026,500. Two different sources said after the sale that the Bellows buyer was James McGlothlin, collector and Virgina Museum of Fine Arts benefactor
Comparatively late in the tight, 59-lot sale, a Frederic Remington oil on canvas, A Halt in the Wilderness (1905) (est. $800–1.2 million), which had been held by the same New Jersey family since its acquisition from Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1919, shot up to $2,770,500, offered by a bidder in the room. The chilling yet compelling Jacklight (1980) (est. $600–900,000) by Andrew Wyeth — a tempera on panel depicting a deer the artist used to observe eating apples, then slaughtered and strung up in a tree — fetched an unambiguously strong sum of $1,538,500 from an American museum bidding by telephone.
Finally, one artist record was set at the Sotheby's sale: for David Johnson, whose View from New Windsor, Hudson River (1869) (est. $300–500,000), came in at $722,500. Western art got a boost from New York’s J.N. Bartfield Galleries, which snapped up five lots, including Charles Marion Russell’s watercolor The Tenderfoot (1900) (est. $600–900,000), for $932,500, bound for a private collection.
As at Christie’s, the high prices at Sotheby’s were often the result of multiple bidders, rather than the two-way trophy tussle seen in recent seasons. But setting aside the choicest pieces, an estimate north of $2 million — especially if it’s not attached to a name-brand artist — seems to be the breaking point in this category. That said, Ryan points out, “Half a million goes a long way in American art. You can get a really great thing for $600,000 instead of a mediocre Cindy Sherman.”