Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, the Midwest’s leading auction house, is pleased to offer collectors a rich selection of fine art during its annual winter auction on December 12, featuring paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture by artists from the Renaissance to the present. The auction contains a strong selection of works by American artists, largely fresh to the market and from private collections.

Norman Rockwell’s Playing Checkers, originally published as the Winter illustration in Brown and Bigelow’s 1950 Four Seasons calendar (est. $250/350,000, illustrated), is the highlight of the sale. This Brown and Bigelow calendar featured images of two elderly gentlemen and their faithful dog, marking the passage of time with their various seasonal pursuits: fishing, swimming, hunting, and playing checkers. Also by Norman Rockwell is Elect Casey, a study for the cover of the November 8, 1958 Saturday Evening Post, depicting the post-election reaction of a recently defeated candidate (est. $70/90,000).

From the Estate of Elaine O'Reilly, Elmhurst, Illinois is a large 1913 landscape, Bluebonnets, by Texas artist Julian Onderdonk, depicting fields of wildflowers near the artist’s hometown and the accompanying clouds as they rolled across the southwestern sky (est. $70/90,000, illustrated). Rounding out the selection of American paintings are a classic New York winter scene by Guy Wiggins, At the Plaza from 1943 (est. $30/50,000), and a view of the Heart of Kansas by Birger Sandzen (est. $25/35,000).

Contemporary art highlights include a variety of abstract expressionist works featuring: Jules Olitski’s 1974 Bokota Silenced – 2 (est. $30/50,000); Alfred Julio Jensen’s 1975 Spectrum-Dialectics (est. $25/35,000); and Kenneth Noland’s horizontal 1969 Fleet (est. $30/50,000) from the Collection of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago, Illinois. Also included is a wonderful example of Chicago artist Roger Brown’s work, Me's Modern City: View from the Veranda (est. $20/30,000, illustrated).

An array of 150 prints by artists ranging from Dürer to Picasso are also included in the sale. On offer from the estate of John and Valere Butterwick of Kewanee, Illinois, are a number of fresh to the market German Expressionist prints by artists such as Otto Mueller, Max Peckstein, Ernst Kirchner and Erich Heckel. Notable Old Masters highlights include Abraham’s Sacrifice by Rembrandt van Rijn (est. $15/20,000), while Contemporary works include Andy Warhol’s portrait of Mao (est. $20/30,000), as well as his portrait of Mick Jagger, signed by both the artist and the rock star (est. $15/20,000).

A large group of works from a Midwestern Institution features contemporary sculpture from a number of artists such as Kenneth Snelson, Bernard Meadows, Richard Howard Hunt, and Iranian artist Gholamhossein Nami.

For more than two decades, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers has been an industry leader combining a local recognition as the Midwest's leading fine art auctioneers with a global reach of buyers. Founded in 1982, sold to Sotheby's in 1997 and reopened in 2003, Leslie Hindman has remained a constant force behind high profile auctions of everything from contemporary paintings and fine jewelry to French furniture and rare books and manuscripts and always maintains a practice of achieving the highest prices while maintaining the highest levels of integrity and customer service.