INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES
Record Rockwell by Lita Solis-Cohen
Sotheby's, New York City
The market for American paintings at the May sales in New York City was alive and well. Bidders from all parts of the country converged in the salesrooms and bid selectively with gusto. At Sotheby's on May 24, 186 of the 231 lots offered sold for an impressive $60,029,600, toward the top end of the $41,268,000/62,333,000 estimate. (Estimates are figured without the buyer's premium. Totals are reported with the buyer's premium.) Only 45 pictures fell by the wayside; not making their reserves, they were returned to their owners.
"We saw sophisticated bidding by people used to buying art," commented Lisa Dawn Schneider, a private dealer in New York City for 20 years. "It was a healthy market with strengths throughout. It makes sense that at a time when people believe currency is worth little, they would look at art as an asset class."
That's why it costs a lot of money to buy something good, and it accounts for the high prices, including record auction prices for 12 artists. The top price of the week was $9.2 million paid for Norman Rockwell's Homecoming Marine, a poignant record of a soldier's return at the end of World War II, painted for the October 13, 1945, cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
This was the second time the 46" x 42" painting sold for a record price at auction in New York. Twenty-five years ago, on April 2, 1981, Phillips got a record $253,000 when this painting sold to Judy and Alan Goffman, who had recently opened their American Illustrators Gallery in New York City. At the time, Judy said, "I can see no reason why a great Rockwell isn't worth as much as a great Remington or a Russell or a Winslow Homer, for that matter. If a Homer sells for $1.7 million, why can't a Rockwell bring as much?"
The seller at Phillips was Roger Wohl, a Florida art dealer and golfer who had been asking $300,000 for the painting and had not found a buyer. He bought the picture in 1970 when he was an art dealer in Chicago and got a call from someone who had received the picture as a gift from Rockwell and had seen Wohl's ad in the yellow pages. Wohl said after he bought it he got a letter from Rockwell stating that the boys in the picture were his own sons. Wohl would not say what he paid for the picture, but he said once he had seriously considered selling it for $50,000.
At Sotheby's this May, Judy Goffman Cutler, standing at the back of the salesroom, bid for a client up to $7.2 million. After the hammer fell at $8.2 million ($9.2 million with buyer's premium), she said she had owned Homecoming Marine for several years before she sold it for around $400,000 and then resold it some years later for $600,000, with most of the profit going to the original buyer. Word in the salesroom was that the consignor this time was Ross Perot, who, after he was offered another Rockwell for $5 million, reportedly said that if Rockwells were going for that much he should sell his. The previous auction record for a Rockwell was $4,959,500 paid for Rosie the Riveter at Sotheby's in 2002.
The buyer of Homecoming Marine was a man sitting in the first row wearing a dark suit and a purple shirt and tie, who said he was Ray Waterhouse, a fine art broker from London. He said he represents several American clients and was buying for one of them. Waterhouse also bought another Rockwell, paying $1,360,000 for Hoodlum Street, a long narrow picture, 26" x 54", painted as an illustration for a short story that appeared in the May 1947 issue of American Magazine.
Waterhouse was not through. Before he left for London, he had paid record prices for an Andrew Wyeth and a Grandma Moses. The Wyeth, South Cushing, a 27½" x 36½" tempera on panel of a horse in a Maine field (est. $2/3 million), cost him $4,384,000 and topped the previous record for a Wyeth, $3,824,000 paid at Sotheby's in 2005 for Battle Ensign, a slightly smaller tempera on panel picture of a house and an American flag painted in 1987. The Grandma Moses snow scene, The Old Oaken Bucket, The Last, painted in 1947, 36" x 48", sold for $598,400 (est. $300,000/ 400,000), topping the previous auction record made back in December 1993 when Country Fair sold at Sotheby's for $200,500.
Among the other records, Rose Garden by Maria Oakey Dewing (1845-1927), wife of the painter Thomas Wilmer Dewing, 24" x 40½", sold for $2,032,000 (est. $2/3 million) to a bidder on the phone with Sotheby's American paintings specialist Dara Mitchell. In May 2000, when it was fresh to market and under-framed, Sotheby's estimated it at $200,000/ 300,000, and it sold to a collector for a then record $1,160,750 (see M.A.D., August 2000). Now packaged in a fancy gold frame, it was still appealing and made a new record. Dewing, hard to sell ten years ago, is hot right now.
The new record for Thomas Hart Benton is $1,808,000, paid by New York City dealer Debra Force, bidding for a client who wanted the 21" x 29" oil on board Keith Farm, Chilmark, one of the spectacular views on Martha's Vineyard, painted in 1955. It topped the previous record for a Benton, $1,540,000 paid at Christie's in 1989 for Homeward Bound, painted in 1944.
There were some surprising records. A whopping record $408,000 was paid for George Loring Brown's 33" x 71¾" circa 1861 Niagara Falls at Sunset, topping Brown's The Crown of New England, 1863, which sold for $49,500 at Christie's in May 1990. Francis Augustus Silva's small luminist picture, On the Hudson, Nyack, 1871, oil on canvas, 12" x 24", sold for $1,472,000, a record for the artist, topping the $992,500 paid at Christie's in 1999 for the larger (20" x 40") Evening in Gloucester Harbor, 1871.
The Green River by the Bucks County Impressionist Robert Spencer, 30" x 36", sold for a strong $363,200 (est. $150,000/ 250,000), topping the previous record for the artist, $135,750 paid at Freeman's in December 2004 for The Gray House.
American illustrators were the stars. Henry Koerner (1915-1991)—the Vienna-born artist, not the German-born William Henry Koerner, illustrator of the American West—painted Post War in 1945-48. The 29½" x 35" oil on board sold for $329,600 (est. $20,000/30,000) to a phone bidder, topping the previous Koerner record, $52,250 for The Pond, sold at Sotheby's on April 12, 1991. A friend of Shahn, his surreal works are rare.
Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935) painted Supper, a 28" x 19" watercolor and oil on board of a mother and child, in an Arts and Crafts manner, and it sold for a record $204,000 in the salesroom to Rudy Ciccarello. The Florida collector of Arts and Crafts furniture, pottery, and decorations is building a museum for his collection. The previous record for Jessie Willcox Smith was $151,000 paid for a watercolor and gouache on paperboard of a woman surrounded by children offered at Butterfields in December 1999.
There was also a record price paid for a work by sculptor Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. Roses of Yesterday, a 65" tall bronze cast by Gorham, sold for $632,000 (est. $300,000/ 500,000). The catalog noted that Frishmuth wrote that it was her "best sundial, originally designed in 1923 as a memorial to Mr. Walden, great lover of children and flowers, the gnomon on the dial is a butterfly symbolizing the fleeting hours." It is one of an edition of five or six. The previous record for Frishmuth was $580,000 for a probably unique bronze figure of a woman, Bubble Dance, 90" tall, also cast by Gorham, that sold at Sotheby's in May 1999.
Western paintings were not ignored. Ernest Martin Hennings's 14" x 12" oil on board of an Indian with her pot, Recollections, was a favorite. Estimated at $60,000/80,000, it sold for $307,200. Hennings's Riders through an Aspen Grove fetched $408,000, well over its $100,000/150,000 estimate. Fiesta Time at Taos by LaVerne Nelson Black, 30" x 36", sold for $531,200, well over its $250,000 high estimate and a record for the artist. It topped her small painting, Pueblo in Winter, which sold for $84,000 at Christie's in May 2005.
"The market is buoyant. Everyone who chose to sell this month is pleased with the results, and some are dumbfounded," said Peter Rathbone, who heads the American paintings department at Sotheby's. His sale included a number of small collections that were estimated realistically. One had to look hard for bargains.
Sotheby's will hold a September sale of lesser works priced from $10,000 to $50,000. American paintings estimated under $10,000 are offered in Arcade sales. The major sales are December and May. The broad-based subscription list for American paintings is one of the largest of any category at Sotheby's. "There seem to be new collectors in each sale," marveled Rathbone.
Rathbone would not reveal if Alice Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress, was a major buyer, but she is creating a new museum, and her entry into the American paintings market has had an impact at the top end. From the very bottom to the top, American paintings have been selling.
For more information, call Sotheby's American paintings department at (212) 606-7280 or go to the Web site (www.sothebys.com).
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