Dedicated American sales have been light this season, with several major auction houses foregoing their normal sales. For Heritage Auctions, this is called opportunity. 

“We are definitely having a moment,” says Aviva Lehmann, senior vice president and director of American art at Heritage Auctions. “We have seen very strong success in this category, so much that we are seeing serious growth—so much there are not enough hours in the day or days in the week.”

Ernie Barnes (1938-2009), Quintet, 1970s. Oil on canvas, 36 x 60 in., signed lower right: ‘Ernie Barnes’. Estimate: $500/700,000

In an effort to mark the sales as important events for collectors, Heritage has even named its May 12 American art sale, Diverse Visions: Important Works by American Masters. “We are aiming at under 100 lots to avoid bidding fatigue, but it will be a tight group of work that is fresh to the market,” Lehmann says. 

Top lots in the sale include Ernie Barnes’ The Quintet, a piece likely painted in the early 1970s prior to 1972. The work, a quintessential piece from the artist, shows five musicians in an exciting composition that highlights the kinetic energy of a live performance. The piece toured extensively around the country and has appeared in numerous exhibitions related to Barnes and his work. After a career in professional football, Barnes started making art that spoke to the Black experience in America, including in his famous work The Sugar Shack, which was made popular by the Good Times TV show and Marvin Gaye, who used the image for his 1976 album I Want You. The Quintet is estimated at $500,000 to $700,000.

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), Cosmic Cities, Grand Canyon of Arizona, 1912. Oil on canvas, 60 x 78 in., signed lower right: ‘Arthur W. Dow’; signed, dated, titled and inscribed on the stretcher bar: ‘Cosmic Cities / Grand Canyon of Arizona / 1912 / Arthur W. Dow / Arthur W. Dow Ipswich / 501 W. 120th Street N.Y. City’. Estimate: $300/500,000

“We’re seeing the floodgates open for Ernie Barnes. He was rather prolific, but this is an exceptionally rare and important work,” says Lehmann. “It’s five feet across, and it’s the largest and most important work from the exhibition The Beauty of the Ghetto, Exhibition of Neo-Manneriest Paintings.”

In the landscape category, Heritage will offer Arthur Wesley Dow’s Cosmic Cities, Grand Canyon of Arizona, an oil on canvas from 1912. Estimated at $300,000 to $500,000, the work has a long exhibition history and has appeared in several books on Dow. Another landscape in the sale is George Ault’s 1940 work Hunters in the Catskills, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.

Henry Koerner (1915-1991), The Showboat, 1948. Tempera on Masonite, 48 x 25¼ in. Estimate: $300/500,000

“The Dow is a beautiful image. Even though it shows the Grand Canyon, I wouldn’t call the artist a Western painter. He’s more a mystical modernist. It’s a powerful piece and massive,” Lehmann says. “The Ault painting should do very well. Ault has been undervalued and this piece is exceptional. He’s mostly known as a precisionist, including his paintings of smokestacks and rooftops, but he also devoted some of his career to the Catskills, which you can see here through his precisionist lens.”

George Tooker (1920-2011), Sleepers I, 1951. Egg Tempera on panel, 18 x 30 in., signed lower left: ‘Tooker’. Estimate: $300/500,000

Also available is Henry Koerner’s 1948 painting The Showboat. Estimated at $300,000 to $500,000, the work is a direct response to Hieronymus Bosch’s Ship of Fools from the late 15th century. In a letter to art dealer Jonathan Boos, who last sold this piece, Koerner’s son, Joseph Koerner, wrote about the work: “Showboat is in part a response to what [my father] perceived to be the human habit of living an illusion. The painting takes the form, roughly, of an allegorical boat, evocative of a battleship with a riveted orange steel turret and trash-strewn decks, afloat on an undulating sea that spreads up the entire length of the picture. Without a visible horizon, and rendered in strange nocturnal colors, the waters, and with it the deck, seem staged: like the set of, or backstage behind, a theater. With clowns, freaks, acrobats, and other performers peopling its machinery, the whole recalls the world of sideshows and circuses.”

Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-1999), Seascape, 1954. Oil on Masonite, 19 x 36 in., signed and dated lower right: ‘Lee-Smith / 54’. Estimate: $80/120,000

Elsewhere in the sale is George Tooker’s Sleepers I, a 1951 work done in egg Tempera on panel. Estimated at $300,000 to $500,000, the work is partially inspired by Matthew Arnold’s 1867 poem “Dover Beach.” 

J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951), Easter, The Saturday Evening Post cover, April 7, 1928. Oil on canvas, 27 x 18½ in., initialed lower right: ‘JCL’. Estimate: $200/300,000

The sale will feature two J.C. Leyendecker images, including Easter, a Saturday Evening Post cover from April 7, 1928. Heritage has the auction record for Leyendecker, so Lehmann is thrilled to have more work by the famous illustrator. “We can’t have an American sale without a Leyendecker,” she says. “We hold his record at $4.1 million so we are very selective.” The work is expected to sell between $200,000 and $300,000.

George Ault (1891-1948), Hunters in the Catskills, 1940. Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 in., signed and dated lower right: ‘G.C. Ault ‘40’. Estimate: $200/300,000

Other artists represented in the sale include George Bellows, Winslow Homer, Nicolain Fechin, Maurice Sendak and Hughie Lee-Smith. 

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