Well, the 19th and 20th century American sales have come again and gone. Any new trends? Not really. Sotheby’s sale began with modernist paintings which initially sold well, with several works by Milton Avery exceeding their high estimates. Then things turned ominous. One of the stars of the sale, Edward Hopper’s Shakespeare at Dusk, failed to meet its $7,000,000 low estimate. After that, results were extremely uneven. African-American works, continuing the trend of recent years, generally sold well, with works by Horace Pippen and Jacob Lawrence exceeding their high estimates. A large oil from the mid-1920’s by Hale Woodruff, Picking Cotton, sold for $764,000, more than tripling his previous auction record. A first-rate gouache by Jacob Lawrence brought almost a million dollars, and a landscape with a church by Horace Pippin brought $300,000. The market for works by artists of color remains strong, as does the market for works by well-known illustrators – works by N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, and Joseph Christian Leyendecker all exceeded their estimates. But Sotheby’s offerings by artists of the American West generally sold below their estimates, and buyers of works by the Hudson River School demanded that the paintings be of the Hudson River area, not scenes painted in Europe. The sale ended with a decided whimper, with 9 of the final 13 lots, all of them 19th century works, failing to sell. Christie’s sale the following day was much more successful, with more desirable lots. Modernist art, again, was strong – Marsden Hartley, Charles Green Shaw, and Arthur Dove set records for work in their respective media. Works by figurative artists such as...
As a private dealer, I sell works of art for clients, but if a client has a painting that isn’t a 19th or 20th century American work, my list of prospective collectors for the painting will be limited, and in such cases I often recommend that the client send the work to auction. I then become the client’s representative with the auction houses, getting estimates to compare, providing independent advice on which auction house to choose, and then helping with shipping and other administrative matters in the months before the sale. I recently helped place this painting in next month’s Impressionist and Modern Sale at Sotheby’s. It’s by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898). Boudin was the son of a harbor pilot in Normandy and spent a lot of time on ships as a boy. When his father left the sea in 1835 to open a shop selling stationery and picture frames in Le Havre, Boudin worked in the shop, meeting many artists who encouraged him. At the age of 22, he began to paint full time, specializing in scenes of the harbors he knew so well. This painting, Low Tide, Portrieux, was painted in 1875 at Portrieux, a harbor on the northern coast of Brittany. Paintings such as this one made Boudin one of the most celebrated marine artists in France. He exhibited at the Salon and was eventually made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. And here is where desire, the subject indicated by my title, comes into play. When a painting is offered at auction, an estimate must be set, and estimating what a work might bring is...
If you enjoy the sound of a broken record, try calling a score of curators of American art at museums around the country and ask them what art they’re seeking for their collections these days. I guarantee you’ll hear the same thing over and over – “works by artists of color.” African-Americans have been part of American art making since before the Revolution. Many of them were enslaved artisans and craftspeople – ceramicists, basket-makers, carvers, and the like – rented out by their owners. With luck, they might be able to keep part of their earnings for themselves, eventually purchase or otherwise obtain their freedom, and become like Joshua Johnson (c. 1763 – c. 1824), a Maryland portrait painter who became the first African-American known to make his living as an artist. In the 19th century, the painter Robert Duncanson and the sculptor Edmonia Lewis, living north of the Mason-Dixon line and aided by Abolitionist patrons, were able to achieve significant reputations, though Lewis, like many subsequent African-American artists, found that working in Europe afforded her a much more congenial way of life. Henry Ossawa Tanner achieved an international reputation but had to spend most of his working life in France to do so. Such artists, however, were outliers seldom mentioned in American art history. When I was in grad school, I can’t remember a single African-American artist being discussed. Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, Augusta Savage, Archibald Motley, Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, and a host of other major African-American artists who came of artistic age in the second quarter of the 20th century – they might as well have...
Netflix recently released a movie called Velvet Buzzsaw that can’t decide quite what it wants to be. It begins as a spoof of the contemporary art world, with its high-powered dealers, mega-galleries that dwarf museums, and art consultants on the take. Then it becomes a horror flick about vengeful murders committed by the spirit of a dead outsider artist whose last wishes were ignored by an unscrupulous young dealer. The only part that has stuck with me is the character played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Morf Vandewalt is an all-powerful critic who has the ability to make or break an artist’s career. A favorable nod from him will send big name collectors in a stampede to buy a young artist’s work, but woe to the artist who falls afoul of Morf’s rigorous standards. In a scene at an art fair, a dealer fawningly asks Morf his opinion on what the dealer considers ground-breaking work and is crushed by Morf’s withering verdict that the work is an imitation of another artist’s work done a few years before. There is now nothing else for the dealer and his artist to do but commit hara-kiri. The satire is very broad, of course, but it made me wonder if there is actually anyone who plays the Morf Vandewalt role in the contemporary art scene. In the 1950’s, Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg were seen this way. Their advocacy could be a major boost to a young artist’s career. But who today has their imprimatur? Of course, the New York scene was much more concentrated then. There were fewer galleries, and the outlets for art...
In the course of my day, I often speak with collectors who assembled their collections 30 or 40 years ago and ask them if they might consider selling something. Much of the time, they are still enjoying the lovely things on their walls and have no need to sell. Sometimes, however, they are moving to a smaller home or require funds to cover medical expenses, and they tell me that they want to sell a piece or two. Then we start a process. I send them recent auction records for the artist whose work they might sell, we discuss the current market, and I give them my ideas on how much they can reasonably expect to realize from a sale. It is all very straightforward, but here is where expectations and hopes can collide with reality. The case of the market for the paintings of Levi Wells Prentice (1851-1935) is instructive in this regard. Prentice was born and grew up in Lewis County, New York. He seems to have been self-taught, and we first find mention of him as a painter of landscapes around Syracuse. Though he began as a landscape painter, however, he really thought like a painter of still lifes. Nature in his paintings seems eerily frozen, as Prentice lavishes attention on each leaf, fallen branch, or bit of moss. In 1883 Prentice moved to Brooklyn and came into his own. Cut off from the vistas of upstate New York, he began to concentrate on still life paintings of fruit, especially apples, and became a master of the subject. He was only moderately successful in his lifetime,...
