By Carter B. Horsley Normally, the major auction houses coordinate their sales very closely for the convenience of out-of-town auction-goers. It is therefore surprising that Christie's is holding its major spring American Paintings auction a few weeks ahead of both Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg. It is also surprising that it is a very small sale - 61 lots as compared with a couple of hundred a decade or so ago - and furthermore it has scheduled a "Fine American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture" auction for July 17, 2002 at its 20 Rockefeller Plaza location, a time when most auction houses and the art world have scant activity. The small number of lots in this sale is about the volume that major evening sales have, but despite the fact that American paintings are among the highest grossing auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York they have been traditionally held during the day. The highlight of this sale, and the cover illustration of the catalogue, is Lot 43, "Ram's Head, Blue Mountain Glory," a classic work by Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), shown at the top of this article. The 20-by-30-inch oil on canvas was executed in 1938. O'Keeffe began collecting and painting animal bones she found in New Mexico in 1930 and one of her most famous paintings, "Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue," was executed the next year and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This painting was exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's An American Place gallery in 1939 and the artist prepared the following statement for the exhibition: "I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven't known now. So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbols of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than animals walking around. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable - and knows no kindness with all its beauty." The placement of the flower so close to the skull against the featureless background and the flower's pretty form and lovely color mitigate against the severity of the skull and plain background and the flower seems to float surreally in this otherwise realistic work. The lot has an estimate of $800,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $3,419,500 including the buyer's premium!
Despite the remarkably high price for this O'Keeffe, this was not a successful sale with more than 40 percent of the 61 offered lots failing to sell. The sale's total, including buyer's premium, was $12,551,515.
Lot 49 is a more typical abstract depiction of the heart of a flower by O'Keeffe. Entitled "Pink Carmelia," it is a 20 1/8-by-25 1/8-inch pastel on paperboard. This strong and bold work has more frenetic brushwork than one normally finds in the artist's work and it is very vibrant. It has an estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $559,500 including the buyer's premium as do all sales prices mentioned in this article.
Another vibrant, modern work is Lot 42, "Underpass #2," a 12-by-16-inch gouache on paper by Stuart Davis (1894-1694). The work, whose provenance includes The Downtown Gallery, is a superb example of Davis's modernism. It has a quite modest estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. It sold for $185,500.
For connoisseurs perhaps the finest work in the auction is Lot 38, "Pond in Spring," a very strong and poetic landscape by John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902). The 15 1/2-by-18 3/8-inch oil on panel is very painterly with a rich palette. It has a conservative estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. It failed to sell! The catalogue entry provides the following commentary: "One of the most innovative painters of his day, John Henry Twachtman advanced the tenets of Impressionism further than most of his American contemporaries.Along with the majority of Twachtman's late landscapes, Pond in Spring was painted in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he created many of his most important and lasting images.These later works also tend to be among the most artistically advanced paintings he produced - among them the present work. Here the landscape elements are simplified, almost abstracted to an expanse of water and the suggestion of a grassy shoreline at the edges of a pond. Twachtman renders the composition in a cool palette of blues, pale greens, and chalky whites. The paint is applied with dash and seeming spontaneity, an effect enhanced by his decision to leave much of the" original surface "visible in the corners of the composition."
Edward Steichen (1879-1973) is best known as a great and major photographer but his Tonalist-like paintings are very fine and quite rare. Lot 48, "Untitled Landscape," is a good oil on canvasboard that measures 12 by 26 inches. It has a modest estimate of $50,000 to $70,000 and while not one of his masterpieces, it is a rather interesting abstract landscape. It sold for $65,725.
Lot 3, "Off Newport" is a very fine seascape by William Stanley Haseltine (1835-1900). The 12 1/4-by-22 1/4-inch oil on canvas was formerly in the collection of Mrs. Norman Woolworth of New York and has an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. It failed to sell.
Lot 6, "Hilly Landscape," by Winslow Homer (1836-1910), shown above, is a large and dark watercolor that was executed in 1894 and has an ambitious estimate of $500,000 to $700,000 as it is not up to his usually extremely high standards, especially in this medium. The catalogue notes that it is one of the artist's "nearly ninety watercolors executed during his vacations in the Adirondack Mountains [that] many scholars believe are among the masterworks of his career." It sold for $669,500. Some other scholars, of course, might argue that his many of his marine paintings, his genre paintings, his Civil War paintings as well as his Prout's Neck watercolors are more significant. This large watercolor has some nice passages in the clouds but the eagle or hawk perched atop a tree trunk is rather awkward and the foliage is not particularly striking.
Lot 9, "The Letter," is a very fine work by William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941). A 30-by-25-inch oil on canvas, it was executed in 1908 and has an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. It sold for $834,500. Around the start of the 20th Century, several Boston painters, including Paxton and Edmund Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp and Frank Benson became very popular for their lovely pictures of lovely women in lovely surroundings. While many of their subjects were dressed in white giving rise to snide comments about the painters' "white ladies," some, like in this work, wore darker colors. In general, the Boston School depicted crowd-pleasing, "happy" pictures, but occasionally its members ventured into more pensive territory as exemplified by this lovely work that has many of the gentle, meditative qualities of a Vermeer and a very unusual and strong composition with a marvelous quality of light.
Lot 13, "Portrait de Marie-Thèrése Gaillard," is a lovel pastel on paper by Mary Cassatt (1845-1926). The work, which is the back-cover illustration of the catalogue, was executed in 1894 and measures 21 1/8 by 22 2/8 inches. Cassatt is best-known for her charming portraits of mothers and their children and this portrait of the young girl is one of the most sensitive and strongest. It has a somewhat ambitious estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. It sold for $1,329,500. Lost 15 and 15 are a lovely, matching pair of floral paintings by Charles Caryl Coleman (1840-1928). The 28 7/8-by-8-inch oils on canvas were executed in 1875 and each has an estimate of $70,000 to $100,000. Lot 15, "Blossoming Pink Branches," has a marine background, while Lot 16, "Blossoming White Branches," has a simpler cloudless sky background. Both lots were passed.
Lot 24, "Sioux Camp," is a very fine work by Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874), the most lyrical and romantic of the early painters of the American West. The 17 3/8-by-23 3/4-inch oil on canvas has a modest estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. It sold for $394,500.
Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) is a rather uneven artist whose works often are too muddied and mottled, but Lot 35, "The Inlet," shown above, demonstrates his better work that is a kind of heavy and rich Impressionism. The oil on canvas measures 25 by 30 inches andhas an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. It failed to sell.
Lot 21, a very cute watercolor and graphite on paper, 21 1/2 by 15 inches of a "Redhead Duck" by John James Audubon (1785-1851), had an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 and sold for $251,500.
Lot 39, "Sugar Maple," a 14-by-20-inch watercolor on paper by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) that had at one time been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and Barbarlee Diamondstein and Carl Spielvogel sold for $361,500 and had been estimated at $300,000 to $500,000.
A very attractive group of three bronze peacocks sculpted by Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) sold for $449,500 and had been estimated at only $150,000 to $250,000.