Heritage Fine Art Auction Realizes $3.5 Million Heritage Auction Galleries held its latest Fine Art Signature® Auction on Thursday, May 8, 2008 and sold 200 lots for $3,210,632, including buyers' premiums.
News-Antique.com - May 22,2008 - Contemporary European Works Lead the Way - Many Records Broken
DALLAS, TEXAS: Heritage Auction Galleries held its latest Fine Art Signature® Auction on Thursday, May 8, 2008 and sold 200 lots for $3,210,632, including buyers' premiums. The next morning, an additional 199 lots sold in a final session realized $296,147, bringing the total to $3,506,779.93.
Heritage attracted 1,017 floor, phone, fax, mail, Internet (HA.com) and Heritage Live ® bidders to this auction, many of them from overseas, accounting for the particular success of European art in this sale.
A sculpture by contemporary Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, Picolo Sfera, led the sale with a price realized of $358,500 against an estimate of $150,000-$200,000.
Astonishing bidders by selling for more than seven times its estimate was French artist Niki de Saint Phalle's Angel of Temperance, with a price realized of $233,025. This sculpture of Temperance, one of a series the artist created based on tarot cards, is a model for the full-size version that crowns the Chapel of Temperance in the Giardino dei Tarocchi (Tarot Garden) in Capalbio, Italy. This 27-inch maquette was made for consideration of an additional full-size sculpture to adorn an office building in Dallas, which was never ordered. The price realized is a record one for De Saint Phalle's tarot models.
European bidders competed fiercely for and won paintings by British artist Malcolm Morley (Horses realized $286,800 against an estimate of $80,000-$120,000) and Chinese/French artist Zao Wou-ki (Marches Montantes realized $131,450 against an estimate of $100,000-$120,000). They lost British artist Sir Thomas Lawrence's Richard Hart-Davis, M.P., however, to an American bidder at $113,525 (against an estimate of $30,000-$50,000).
The downward trend in the American economy was not reflected in the results for American paintings, as Heritage set the record for California Impressionist Millard Sheets, with his Cotton Pickers selling for $53,775. Other American masters were successful in this auction, such as John Marin's watercolor Shapes - Colors, Delaware County, Pa., a Joseph Meeker southern U.S. landscape, and a portrait of Esther M. Groome by William Merritt Chase, all of which sold for well above their estimates.
Highlights from the auction include the following:
