It is the emotional and intellectual experience of collecting that has been the most glorious and rewarding aspect of my life. ~ the late Barney A. Ebsworth

On Tuesday, Part One of Christie’s sale of An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection totaled $317,801,250, a vigorous start to the two-day dedicated sale of the travel entrepreneur’s exceptional collection of 20th Century American art. The sale was 88% sold by lot, and 99% sold by value.

Highlights of the collection included Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey, 1929, the most important work by the artist still in private hands, which achieved $91,875,000 (with fees), a record for the artist and the category of American Art. [Hopper's former auction record was $40.5 million for East Wind Over Weehawken in 2013. Read more about Chop Suey's backstory from Quartz.]

Willem de Kooning’s Woman as Landscape also set an artist record at $68,937,500, and Jackson Pollock’s Composition with Red Strokes sold for $55,437,500.  Additional auction records were achieved for the following artists: Arshile Gorky, John Marin, Joseph Stella, Gaston Lachaise, Tom Otterness, Leon Polk Smith, Suzy Frelinghuysen, George Tooker, David Smith, Francis Criss, Charles Green Shaw, and Patrick Henry Bruce.

[Read more on the sale, its prices and third-party guarantors from the New York Times.]

On November, 14 a further 49 works from the collection were offered in the Day Sale, producing 11 more artist records — for Andrew Dasburg, Arnold Wiltz, Jan Matulka, Jean Xceron, James Brooks, Morris Kantor, Esphyr Slobodkina, Rolph Scarlett, Theodore Jacob Roszak, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Byrone Browne (whose record was broken twice in the same sale). The final total for the two sales, which were 98 per cent by lot and 97 per cent by value, was $323,103,500.

The late Mr. Ebsworth was a renowned collector and entrepreneur who was named one of the ‘World’s 200 Greatest Collectors’. He founded cruise lines, the Intrav luxury travel business, and was an angel investor in the stuffed-animal phenomenon Build-A-Bear Workshop. Mr. Ebsworth’s passion for art originated during his station with the US Army in France in 1956, when he made weekly trips to the Louvre. When he became a collector in his own right, his credo was “quality, quality, quality,” and with that mindset he amassed the most comprehensive collection of American Modernism in private hands. He housed his collection at home in Seattle, in a custom-built house he designed in collaboration with architect Jim Olson, and named “An American Place” in tribute to the former Alfred Stieglitz gallery of the same name.

In an auction world first, the sale of the Ebsworth Collection marks the first time an art auction at this price level has been recorded on a blockchain. Christie’s and Artory, a leading art-centric technology provider, partnered to create a secure digital registry for the sale of the Ebsworth Collection, in the spirit of the innovation and entrepreneurship that guided Mr. Ebsworth's career.

The 20th Century auctions continue at Christie's with the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale  on Thursday. The running total for the season stands at $653,965,375.