Sotheby's May Sale of American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture

Written by Umberto Napolitano Wednesday, 25 January 2012 22:39

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s spring sale of American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture will take place on May 21, 2009. The sale will feature a selection of works from private collections by prominent American artists spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, and will be exhibited to the public at Sotheby’s New York galleries beginning May 16th, 2009.

The cover lot of the sale is Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses’s Country Fair, from 1950 (est. $700/900,000). Though Grandma Moses enjoyed painting as a small child, as an adult the demands of daily farm life and raising children prevented her from devoting her time to studying art. Not until she reached the age of 70 was Moses – or Grandma as she then preferred to be known – able to devote her attention to painting. She became a prolific artist, painting over 1,600 pictures, many of which depict her family’s happiest moments in the countryside. Without any formal artistic training, Grandma Moses’s subjects were drawn from her life as a mother and farmer’s wife both in the Shenandoah Valley and in Hoosick Falls, New York.

Walt Kuhn’s The White Rider (Rider With Blue Sash), dated 1946 (est. 400/600,000), also from the Private Minnesota Collection, is one of many modernist highlights. Kuhn’s career is almost exclusively identified with his poignant portrayals of circus and vaudeville performers. From 1941 to 1948, the artist was granted a press pass to Madison Square Garden, which allowed him to view performers not only on stage but behind the scenes as they prepared for their acts. Kuhn created a series of drawings during this time, some of which were developed into finished portraits such as this depiction of The White Rider, which presents his subject outside of the circus spectacle and grants the viewer access to the human character beneath the performer’s public persona.

The preeminent figure in one of America’s most renowned artistic families, Andrew Wyeth died in January at the age of 91. His widely exhibited tempera painting Buzzard’s Glory, from 1968, will be one of nine works by the artist offered this May (est. $600/800,000). The picture is among a selection of works included this season from a Private Minnesota Collection. Wyeth drew most of his subjects from his immediate surroundings, mainly Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he was raised and Cushing, Maine, where he spent his summers. Buzzard’s Glory depicts Johnny Lynch, a Chadds Ford neighbor. Wyeth wrote in his autobiography, “I, frankly, was intrigued by his jet-black hair. Often my interest in a subject comes from apparently insignificant detail. The title is the section of Chadds Ford – the Italian part of town – where his family lived for some time. Why Buzzard’s Glory? Well, this is where people lived who used to shoot buzzards to eat, and the place was always called Buzzard’s Glory. I can’t imagine how anyone could live after eating a buzzard.”

Also among the works on offer by Andrew Wyeth is Independence Day, from 1961 (est. $300/500,000). In the picture, Wyeth portrays his longtime friend and neighbor Tom Clark sitting on his porch alongside a billowing American flag. Clark lived in a small African American community in Chadds Ford known as “Little Africa,” which had originated as a Quaker stop on the Underground Railroad. Beginning in 1957, Wyeth produced numerous drawings and watercolors of Clark, whose physical features captivated the artist. Other works by Andrew Wyeth, as well as his son Jamie, will be offered as part of the Estate of Isaac Moinester.

Sotheby’s will offer five works by Winslow Homer, including his 1886 watercolor Spanish Moss at Tampa (est. $600/800,000). Between 1884 and 1905, Homer made several trips from Maine to the tropics, visiting the Bahamas, Florida, Cuba and Bermuda. In these new climates, Homer found both new challenges and new inspiration, and his Florida watercolors are notable for a wide range of techniques that he employed to portray the exotic landscape, from complex layers of color to delicate transparent washes. These scenes have a spontaneity and freshness that is strikingly different from earlier works.

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