Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), Primeval Image, ca. 1970. Oil on canvas. Courtesy Swann Auction Galleries. Estimate: $120/180,000 SOLD: $139,200
New York, NY
Swann Auction Galleries
African American Art
October 7
$2.17 million
Swann Galleries’ October 7 African American Art sale saw stellar results, achieving $2.17 million in total sales, including nine world auction records. Collectors were particularly absorbed in the abstract genre, with Hale Woodruff’s circa 1970 oil Primeval Image leading the auction at $139,200. In addition, Ed Clark’s early 1980s dry pigment abstraction achieved $120,650, as well as a smaller dry pigment work from 2001 that earned $30,480. Also of note was the 1980 acrylic on canvas To Crab Island by Sir Frank Bowling, which sold for $53,240.
Figurative scenes included James A. Porter’s 1940 oil The American Family (The Family), which earned a record for the artist at $50,800. “James A. Porter’s record is a long time coming. The Family is the first large portrait to come to auction, and we’re happy to see it sell to a large institution,” says Nigel Freeman, Swann’s director of fine art.
Additional auction records were achieved for Roy LaGrone, Frank E. Smith, John Outterbridge, Nefertiti Goodman, Marva Pitchford Jolly, Verna Hart, Willie Birch and Leroy Johnson.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), The Sampler (Saturday Evening Post Cover, March 1, 1924), 1923. Oil on canvas, 28 x 22 in., signed and dated lower right. Courtesy Shapiro Auctions. Estimate: $200/300,000 SOLD: $456,250
Bedford Hills, NY
Shapiro Auctions
Fine Arts & Objects
October 25
$2.76 million
Shapiro Auctions’ fall Fine Arts & Objects auction achieved an impressive $2.76 million. Leading the sale was Russian artist Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin’s monumental three-panel painted screen, Tsarevich Ivan, The Firebird, and the Gray Wolf, from around 1924, which sold for $1,062,500—more than 15 times its original estimate.
Among the noteworthy American lots was Norman Rockwell’s rediscovered Saturday Evening Post cover from 1923, titled The Sampler. The painting sold for $456,250, against estimates of $200,000 to $300,000. Thought lost, and listed as “Whereabouts unknown” in Laurie Norton Moffat’s “Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue,” The Sampler has remained in the sitter’s family to the present day and makes a historically important return to public record, exemplifying Rockwell at a pivotal point in his career.
John James Audubon (1785-1851), Virginian Partridge, plate 76 from The Birds of America, from Original Drawings by John James Audubon, by Robert Havell, circa 1830. Engraving with etching, aquatint and hand-coloring on wove paper, watermark J Whatman Turkey Mill 1829, 26¼ x 37¾ in. Courtesy John Moran Auctioneers. Estimate: $15/20,000 SOLD: $47,625
Monrovia, CA
John Moran Auctioneers
Art of the American West
November 19
$500,348
John Moran Auctioneers’ Art of the American West sale took place on November 19 and brought in more than half a million in total sales, with 89 percent of the 417 lots sold. The top lot was a John James Audubon engraving, Virginian Partridge, from The Birds of America, which more than doubled its $20,000 high estimate when it sold for $47,625. Other artists with strong results in the sale include Maynard Dixon, Gustave Baumann, Joseph Henry Sharp, Allan Houser and more.
Dixon’s landscape Lone Pine, 1924, bested its $30,000 high estimate when it sold for $31,750. In addition, Baumann’s 1926 woodcut Punch Hunting Chipmunks, achieved $16,510 against a presale estimate of $10,000 to $15,000; Sharp’s floral still life Delphiniums reached $13,970, breaking past its $10,000 estimate; and Houser’s bronze Night Song sold for $4,950, just shy of its $5,000 estimate. —
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