RESULTS: American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture at Sotheby's
Jennifer Roth, Director of Fine Arts, commented, “We were very pleased with the result of the sale, which was comfortably between the low and the high estimate. The sale was marked by active though selective bidding, in both the 19th and 20th century sections of the sale; clients knew what they wanted, and were prepared to compete."
Many works achieved multiples of their high estimates, and almost half (48.4%) of the lots sold made prices above their high estimate. The top price of the sale went to Gaston Lachaise’s rare nickel-plated lifetime cast of a Mask of Marie Pierce, the sister-in-law of the artist, which sold for $68,500 (lot 11, est. $10/15,000). Lachaise’s Dolphins, featured on the cover of the catalogue, also received considerable interest and achieved $56,250 against an estimate of $15/20,000 (lot 10). Charles Ephraim Burchfield’s Eclipse of the Moon in Spring also performed well, bringing $50,000 (lot 5, est. $20/30,000), with interest perhaps spurred by the Burchfield show currently on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles which will travel later in the year to the Whitney Museum.
Works by artists who rarely appear at auction drew considerable interest. Sotheby’s now holds the three highest prices at auction for seldom seen James Guy. His Industrial Symphony (lot 24, est. $15/20,000) brought $43,750 to become the second highest price achieved at auction for the artist. William Meade Prince, painting the desirable but hard to find boxing match (lot 172, est. $5/7,000) brought $28,750; while Walt S. Louderback’s Construction Workers (lot 137, est. $5/7,000) made $34,375. Another surprise was lot 131, by Louis St Gaudens, brother of Augustus, whose work is practically unknown at auction. His Piping Pan brought almost five times the high estimate when it sold for $34,375 (est. $5/7,000), a record for the artist. A rare work of the Apollo spacecraft by Wilson Hurley, who was commissioned by NASA to create pictures of space projects, brought $40,625 against an estimate of $8/12,000 (lot 175).
Highlights from the 19th century section included two quintessential Hudson River School studies by James McEntee, Summer in the Hills: Two Paintings, which sold for $40,625 (lot 47, est. $8/12,000). The pictures descended in the family of the artist’s brother-in-law Calvert Vaux, who is best known as one of the designers of New York’s Central Park, and remained in their original frames. Gutzon Borglum, creator of Mount Rushmore, was represented by Bust of Abraham Lincoln, which totaled $28,125 (lot 150, est. $10/15,000).
