Thanks, Mom!
Shannon’s
William Trost Richards, Mountain Lake, 1861
estimate: $60,000–$80,000
realized: $215,000
“You can have anything you find in there, dear,” said the woman’s mother as the younger woman sifted through her closet. The daughter pulled out a picture, mounted in a crappy frame, and brought it to Shannon’s in Greenwich, Conn. Although it appeared to be unsigned, auctioneer Gene Shannon immediately recognized it as a work by William Trost Richards.
Lucky daughter.
Richards was a major proponent of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement, also known as the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. These artists, contemporaries of the Hudson River school painters, are best known for exquisitely detailed, almost photographic, landscapes and nature studies. They painted with the idea that the more “truthful” (ie. detailed) they were in rendering god’s earthly paradise, the more divinity they would reveal in their art. I myself first learned about Richards in the earliest days of my career at the Brooklyn Museum, when we mounted an exhibition of American Pre-Raphaelite work, called The New Path. It was a revelation then, and the work is still somewhat under the radar today.
As I mentioned, at first glance, the closet find appeared to be unsigned. But according to Shannon, he wet his thumb and wiped it across the lower right corner of the canvas, revealing the signature and date of 1861. (Kids, don’t try this at home!) More than a dozen bidders vied for the work, which more than tripled its high estimate. This is the fifth most expensive Richards work at auction; his auction record is $387,500, set in 1999.
The auction also brought out a find from the Western side of the Mississippi….a lost work of W. Herbert Dunton, one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists. As anyone who saw my July issue of the Forbes Collector knows, in the early part of the 20th century the Taos artists painted the quieter side of Western life: native pueblo life, and pristine, light-filled landscapes. Dunton, best known for his images of wildlife and ranchers on the trail, was not a prolific guy, and most of his work is accounted for in museums and private collections. They are super-rare on the market, selling retail between $75,000 for a small 8 x 10 picture to over a million for a big important one. This mid-sized cowboy picture, called The Range Rider, not the best Dunton and not the worst, had over 20 bidders rassling for it, and the winner lassoed it at $179,250–more than five times its high pre-sale estimate of $30,000. The Taos artists are market darlings and their best works are disappearing fast.
One last lot to note in this sale: a Blanche Lazzell color woodblock print called The Blue Jug of 1928. Lazzell’s sumptuous color woodcuts are considered the holy grail of what was called the “white-line” woodcut prints, a style she helped to pioneer among artists in Provincetown, Mass. She only did some 150 images, and collectors particularly covet her pre-1940 work. They sell for beween $15,000 and $75,000, with most falling in the $25,000 to $45,000 range. This one brought $31,070, her second highest price at auction. See the June issue of the Forbes Collector for the full story on the market for American color woodblock prints. —M.S.
