Sotheby’s New York – American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture
Thursday, October 27th, 2011Sotheby’s American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture Sale on Thursday December 1st will present exceptional 19th Century, Impressionist, Modern and Western works for collectors seeking the best examples by American artists.
We are delighted to offer four extraordinary works by George Catlin from the Benjamin O’Fallon Collection, including two portraits of the prominent Indian Chiefs Black Hawk and One Horn, as well as Interior of a Mandan Lodge and Buffalo Chase, A Surround by the Hidatsa. Originally commissioned by Benjamin O’Fallon, nephew of William Clark and the United States Indian Agent for the Missouri Tribes, the works have been in the collection of the Field Museum since 1894.
Also on offer will be paintings and works on paper from the Estate of Helen Marx. A successful publisher and philanthropist in New York, Mrs. Marx assembled a highly personal collection of works by several of the most notable American artists of the 19th century, including Winslow Homer, Martin Johnson Heade, and Severin Roesen.
Other 19th century highlights include Winslow Homer’s Reverie,1872 one of only four in a series of highly important works by the artist featuring a beautiful young woman gazing out a window, as well as works by American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Frederick Frieseke, Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson, among others.
The work of American modern artists is represented by Milton Avery’s Crucifixon and Edward Hopper’s Construction in Mexico, both compositions which were inspired by the artists’ independent travels through Mexico during the spring of 1946. Marsden Hartley’s Untitled (Still-Life), 1919, was painted during the artist’s transformative two-year sojourn in New Mexico, and is one of only four known “window still-lifes” featuring the New Mexico landscape in the background.
Among the Western American works being presented are paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Ernest Hennings and Maynard Dixon, as well as sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, among others.
