The Graham Arader Sale An Important Collection of Color Plate Books, Maps, Atlases, Watercolors and Paintings Will Be Offered at Sotheby’s in New York on 19 June 2009.
the compositions allows the viewer to focus without distraction on the beauty and delicate complexity of the plants themselves.
More than twenty prints by John James Audubon from his historical folios The Birds of America and Quadrupeds will be offered without reserve and with estimates ranging from $1,500/2,000 to $7/9,000. Among them are: the Booby Gannet, the Purple Martin, the Lesser Tern, the Raven, the Columbian Black-tailed Deer and the Black American Wolf. A group of unpublished original watercolors by the 19th century southern artist John Abbot of Birds of Georgia and the Surrounding Region will also be offered without reserve (estimated at $10/15,000 each). Executed circa 1819-1826, the watercolors of birds including the Red Grosbeak Female, the Prairie Warbler and the Solitary Flycatcher, show each subject perched on a branch with floral backgrounds. In his long career, Abbot is estimated to have completed over five thousand watercolor drawings of the flora and fauna of Georgia, but very few have been published or otherwise reproduced. Because of his limited publication, Abbot’s work has only recently been recognized and elevated to the rank of such better-known contemporaries as William Barton, Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon. John James Audubon, Hooping Crane, Est. $50/60,000.
