New Peaks Reached For American Art At Christie's in New York A remarkable result for American paintings at Christie's in New York today, with the Department's Spring 2008 Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture sale totaling $72.6 million
News-Antique.com - May 30,2008 - $72.6 Million Sale Total The Highest For The Category At Christie’s
Monumental $17.74 Million Thomas Moran Wyoming Landscape More Than Doubles The Previous Auction Record For A 19th Century American Painting
Re-Discovered $6.31 Million Marsden Hartley Masterwork Sets New Record For American Modernism
$41.47 Million American Western Art Total The Highest Ever Sold At Auction, Sets Eight New Auction Records And Includes $11.22 Million For The Renowned Stegall Collection
New York – Christie’s Spring 2008 Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture sale
totaled $72.6 million, set new records and established major new benchmarks across the category.
The highest total for an American Art sale at Christie’s, the auction also saw new records set for
19th Century American art, American Modernism – and included the highest combined total for
American Western art. 111 lots were sold during the proceedings for an average sold lot value of
$654,043.
Eric Widing, Head of American Paintings at Christie’s, says: “Today the Wild West came to
Christie’s as we shattered previous records and achieved an astonishing $17.7 million for Moran’s
masterwork of the Green River, Wyoming. Numerous successive American Western records
were set immediately after, when property from the great Stegall collection of Taos masters was
offered, along with a tremendous new record for Albert Bierstadt, one of the most storied
landscapists of the West. Other categories saw excellent prices, in particular Marsden Hartley’s
newly-discovered Modernist masterwork Lighthouse, which set a record not just for Hartley, but
also for American Modernism.”
The auction was led by Thomas Moran’s monumental American West landscape Green River of
Wyoming, which realized a remarkable $17.74 million, more than doubling the previous record
for a 19th century American painting. One of the earliest of his acclaimed oils depicting the
Green River, it sold in the room to American art dealers Avery Galleries, from Bryn Mawr, PA.
The pre-sale estimate for the painting was $3.5 to $5 million, and the previous record for a 19th
century American painting was John Singer Sargent's Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife that
fetched $8.8 million in 2004.
A new auction record was also set in the rising American Modernism category, when Marsden
Hartley’s recently-rediscovered Lighthouse – an American Modernist masterwork and the finest
painting of its kind to be offered in a generation – sold for $6.31 million. It was bought by an
anonymous phone bidder, and broke the previous record for American Modernism that had stood
at $6.17 million, when Georgia O'Keeffe's Calla lilies with red anemone sold at Christie's in 2001.
Beyond the success of the Moran landscape, American Western art had an unprecedented day,
with $41.47 million sold during the auction – the largest auction of American Western art ever
sold. The exceptional works from the renowned Stegall Collection – the most important
collection of Taos paintings to appear at auction in a decade – totaled $11.22 million; and when
combined with other Western works in the sale, eight new records were set, including those for
Albert Bierstadt, Walter Ufer and
