Prints & Drawings

Old Master through Modern Prints:

Swann Galleries has set countless auction records for important American and European prints spanning five centuries, and our sales feature the most comprehensive offering of quality works for new and seasoned collectors alike. This auction features premiere examples of printmaking from the late-fifteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, including significant Old Masters such as Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn, nineteenth-century printmakers like James McNeill Whistler, and American and European twentieth-century artists such as Martin Lewis and M.C. Escher.

Top sales in this auction include $93,750 for Winslow Homer’s Perils of the Sea, 1888, in April 2024; James A. M. Whistler's Nocturne, 1879-80, for $282,000 in October 2010, still the record price for a Whistler print sold at auction; $173,000 in October 2013 for Albrecht Dürer's St. Jerome in His Study, 1514. In November 2017, we achieved the record for any print by Edward Hopper: $317,000 for The Lonely House, 1923. Additionally, in November 2023, we sold the highest price achieved for an MC Escher woodcut: $293,000 for Coast of Amalfi (Composition), 1934. The department also holds the top four records for any print by Martin Lewis.

19th & 20th Century Art:

This auction highlights American and European paintings and works on paper. It features nineteenth-century European artists such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Théodore Géricault alongside twentieth-century visionaries like Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Gustave Klimt. We also regularly feature offerings of Latin American art, having successfully sold original works by artists such as Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo.

Significant sales in 19th & 20th Century art include Egon Schiele's watercolor Schlafender Mann, 1910, for $905,000 in September 2015; Sans titre (Le Rêve), 1930-32, by Francis Picabia for $221,000 in March 2021; Dos Figuras, 1979, by Rufino Tamayo for $24,700 in November 2021; Fleurs, 1959, by Pablo Picasso for $81,250 in March 2024; Tulips, 1924, by Charles Demuth for $137,000 in June 2022, and Il disperato; Autoritratto, 1898-1900, by Giacomo Balla for $221,000 in March 2022.

Notable collections we have offered include The Ismar Littmann Family Collection of German Expressionism and European Avant-Garde; Rembrandt Etchings from the John Villarino Collection; A Collector's Vision: Works on Paper from the Belle Époque and Beyond; the Virginia Zabriskie Collection, and American Prints from a Private Collection.