A panoramic view by Edward Hopper was the top lot in a $50.8 million Christie's American art sale on Thursday. The auction total was the highest for the category at Christie's since 2008, with 99 out of 135 lots sold. Overall, 73 percent were sold by lot and 85 percent by value.

Signature scenes of artists' home territories resonated with buyers, including O'Keeffe's New Mexico mountains, Wyeth's coastal Maine, Hopper's New York skylines, Gifford's Hudson River and Parrish's New Hampshire farmhouse.

The sale's star was Hopper's 1928 oil painting Blackwell's Island (a New York locale now called Roosevelt's Island) which brought $19.1 million (estimate: $15 million -20 million). The sale's second top earner was a Hopper watercolor. His Kelly Jenness House, of 1932, fetched $4.1 million (estimate: $2 million-$3 million), garnering a new auction record for a work on paper by the American modernist.

“The thrilling sale of Edward Hopper’s Blackwell’s Island for $19,163,750 marks the highest price ever achieved for a single work of art in an American Art Sale at Christie’s," stated Elizabeth Sterling, Christie's Head of American Painting.

A suite of works by the Wyeth family of artists also demanded top prices. Consigned by New Jersey businessman and art collector Eric Sambol, and his wife Cynthia, the group was led by family patriarch N.C. Wyeth whose Norry Seavey Hauling Lobster Off Blubber Island (1938) fetched nearly $844,000.

Other top perfomrers were Norman Rockwell's Starstruck (1934) which went for over $2 million (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000); a circa-1793 portrait of George Washington by John Trumbull, selling for $1.3 million (estimate: $700,000-1,000,000); and a crayon, ink and crayon wash over transfer lithograph work by George Bellows, titled Splinter Beach, fetched $1.2 million (estimate: $500,000-700,000).

Hudson River School artist Sanford Robinson Gifford's luminous Tappan Zee brought a strong $1,179,750, well above the pre-sale high estimate of $300,000. In the auction catalog, Gifford expert Dr. Ila Weiss had described the work as "a long-lost, well-documented, important late painting by Sanford R. Gifford."

The Cincinnati Art Museum was the buyer of Georgia O'Keeffe's 1943 oil painting My Back Yard, at $1,803,750. The catalog notes that it is one of an important group of works that depict the red and yellow cliffs near O'Keeffe's New Mexico home in Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch.

Peaceful Valley (Homestead), a classic twilight scene by Maxfield Parrish that depicts his home The Oaks, in Cornish, New Hampshire, brought nearly twice its low estimate to fetch $1,143,750.