Records & Results: American Art

We closed our Spring 2017 season with a climactic sale of American Art on Thursday, June 15. The annual auction offered exclusively original or unique works by artists living or working in North America over the last 200 years.

Lot 41: William Glackens, The Beach, Isle Adam, oil on canvas, 1925-26. Sold June 15, 2017 for $581,000.

The top lot of the sale, and the season as a whole, was William Glackens’s The Beach, Isle Adam, 1925-26. The bright canvas, depicting bathers at a popular locale outside of Paris, is one of the artist’s most significant works from the mid-1920s. A collector purchased the oil painting over the phone for $581,000.

Lot 92: John Marin, Small Point, Maine, from the Bumper, watercolor, 1928. Sold June 15, 2017 for $50,000.

Half of the top lots in the sale appeared at auction for the first time. One of the highlights was a recently rediscovered watercolor by John Marin, titled Small Point, Maine, from the Bumper, 1928. Before the work was lost to scholarship, it was included in the inaugural exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s final gallery, An American Place. The painting was purchased by a collector for $50,000.

Lot 173: Milton Avery, Lakeside Trees, watercolor, 1953. Sold June 15, 2017 for $65,000.

Twentieth-century works dominated the sale, with multiple works by Milton Avery and Charles Burchfield receiving some of the highest bids. Avery’s bright watercolor Lakeside Trees, 1953, was purchased by a collector for $65,000, while Reclining Bathers, 1950, a unique color monotype with hand coloring in oil and gouache, reached $13,750. All four watercolors by Burchfield found buyers. The 1917 watercolor Untitled (House on a Hill) led the pack, selling for $30,000, above a high estimate of $18,000. Untitled (Rainbow on Roof of House), 1916, achieved its high estimate of $20,000.

Lot 101: Charles Burchfield, Untitled (House on a Hill), watercolor and pencil, 1917. Sold June 15, 2017 for $30,000.

Browse the catalogue for complete results. The next sale of American Art at Swann Galleries will be held in Spring 2018.We are currently accepting quality consignments.