Christie's Offers Unrivaled Selection of American Art This Fall The auction house is delighted to announce details of its Fall 2007 Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture auction.
News-Antique.com - Oct 29,2007 - New York – After a remarkable season of American Paintings sales in Spring 2007 that totaled
$62.2 million and saw Christie’s lead the market, the auction house is delighted to announce details
of its Fall 2007 Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture auction.
The most valuable selection of American Art from a variety of sources ever gathered into one
auction, the sale signals a milestone in the American art market. Led by a George Bellows
masterpiece expected to break the world auction record for the most expensive American painting
sold, the selection of works on offer also include the most important collection of American
Western art to appear on the market for a generation, masterworks by American Impressionists, fine
Ashcan School canvases, images from Modernist masters and an American folk art masterpiece.
Eric Widing, Head of American Paintings, says: “We are honored that so many consignors this
season have entrusted their masterworks to Christie’s. Never before have we offered in a single sale
so many great achievements and artistic milestones in American art.”
George Wesley Bellows: Men of the Docks
Men of the Docks by George Wesley Bellows, painted in 1912, is a monumental masterwork by the
undisputed leader of the Ashcan School. Polo Crowd, also by Bellows, and illustrating the American
social set at play, established the world auction record for an American painting in 1999 when it
realized $27.7 million. Men of the Docks, with its gritty, realist depiction of New York City at the start
of a brave new century, is a classic Bellows subject. Expectations are high for this work, one of his
most forceful and powerful achievements, and the painting is estimated to realize between $25 to
$35 million.
At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City pulsed with an influx of millions of immigrants
as America began to develop its new industrial and mercantile power. Bellows’ work, well set with
the city’s skyscrapers and a wonder of the new world, an ocean liner, in the background, captures the
daily search for work by these new arrivals as they gather for the crew boss to choose the day’s
contingent of labor.
Ashcan Canvases
Beyond the tour-de-force Bellows, the sale features
excellent examples of paintings by his fellow Ashcan
School contemporaries, including works from the
Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence Collection. A
stunning example of Robert Henri’s celebrated portraits
of children, Francine was completed in the summer of
1921 on a visit to the Woodstock artists’ colony and
exemplifies all the hallmarks that make his portraiture
some of his most coveted work – with a concentration
of color and focus on revealing the personality of his
young sitters (estimate: $500,000-700,000). Vaudeville by
Everitt Shinn is a visually spectacular and sociologically
complex picture that reveals his fascination with the
everyday experiences of New York urban living and particularly the very popular burlesque scene.
With a dramatic color scheme and inventive composition, Vaudeville is one of his most captivating
endeavors, and encapsulates the magic and
