Market report

What we’re hearing from galleries and auction houses across the country.

An indoor view of Debra Force Fine Art in New York City.

Bethany Dobson, Director
Debra Force Fine Art
Despite the challenges of the past year, we continue to see interest in fresh-to-the-market works across multiple artistic styles. Since visits to the gallery have been difficult to impossible for many, we have concentrated our outreach efforts to clients through both print and digital media. Weekly email blasts and exhibition mailings, including postcards or brochures, have helped us stay connected to our clients and have prompted calls and/or emails from those who haven’t been in the gallery in the past few years. Print ads, our own website and other digital platforms have also produced more discussion about featured artworks than they have for us in previous years. The comfort level for buyers looking at works via images, video, installation shots and the like has grown significantly, and we have also seen an uptick in museum acquisitions over the past few months, which is very encouraging.

We have been seeing sales in American impressionism, Ashcan and American modernism since our recent shows have primarily included works from the late 19th and 20th centuries. However, the interest is there for great works from all periods. We’ve sold some paintings from the 1870s to 1880s by Lockwood de Forest and Edward Simmons, while a growing appetite for women artists has resulted in sales of examples by Fern Coppedge, Grace Hartigan, Grandma Moses, Jane Peterson and Florine Stettheimer. Recently, we were fortunate to handle a major social commentary painting by Paul Sample, whose most important paintings are in museum collections.

Our most recent exhibition, New Yorkers and Their City, included some great examples by artists who may not have the same name recognition as some of their contemporaries. Clyde Singer, an Ohio-born artist, was inspired by George Bellows and John Sloan to paint a great view of the East River, 1938, with a tugboat and several figures. Ernest Fiene’s Waterfront, Lower Manhattan, 1931, is a prime example of the artist’s urban paintings and shows the panoramic skyline of lower New York City, including the ongoing and recently completed construction of several skyscrapers. Samuel Woolf’s background as an illustrator resulted in paintings that captured the excitement of a moment on the New York City streets as seen in Brown the Wheats, 1913, where a young boy watches through the window of Childs’ Restaurant as the chef prepares pancakes.

Debra Force Fine Art
13 E. 69th Street, Suite 4F, New York, NY 10021
www.debraforce.com