Swann Galleries' American Art sale on June 9 brought a preliminary total of $1,085,108.

Todd Weyman, Swann Galleries’ Vice President and Director of Prints & Drawings said, “We are enjoying seeing the market for this annual sale grow, with almost 20% of the sold lots exceeding their high estimates, and competitive bidding for top lots including works by Sanford Robinson Gifford, Steve Wheeler, Miguel Covarrubias and other artists from a wide range of schools and genres.”     

The sale was headlined by an intense bidding battle over the phone for the previously unrecorded Gifford painting, Study of the Parthenon, 1869.  The study – which relates to a painting of the same subject, Ruins of the Parthenon, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. – sold for $269,000.

Works by Brooklyn native Guy C. Wiggins performed well, as did works by fellow New Yorker Paul Cadmus, which saw fierce live online bidding. Miguel Covarrubias’ At Leroy’s, which went on to be illustrated in his book Negro Drawings, shows the artist’s take on the Harlem Renaissance, harkening back to a period of intense creativity in the city. At Leroy’s sold for $60,000.

Abstract works were also popular among collectors in this sale, with Robert Barrell’s first piece to come to auction, the oil painting Cat and Bird, soaring over its pre-sale estimate to $23,750. Fellow Indian Space Painter Steve Wheeler’s bright The Halogens II also eclipsed its high estimate at $65,000.

Records were set by Elsie Driggs’s Figures Fighting (The Mob), which came in at $11,250, more than five times the previous auction record for the artist, and Gabor Peterdi’s Pacific I J-VII-89, oil on canvas, 1989, which set a new record for the artist at auction at $8,450.

AMERICAN ART

Sale total: $1,085,108 with Buyer’s Premium

Hammer total: $870,975

Estimates for sale as a whole: $821,400 to $1,280,100

We offered 184 lots; 134 sold (73% sell-through rate by lot)

Top lots                                                                                                                                               Prices with buyer’s premium

3         Sanford Robinson Gifford, Study of the Parthenon, oil on canvas, 1869.                                                                 $269,000 I

94       Steve Wheeler, The Halogens II, oil on canvas, circa 1943.                                                                                       $65,000  D

33       Miguel Covarrubias, At Leroy’s, watercolor, pen and ink, circa 1924.                                                                     $60,000  C

46       Guy C. Wiggins, Chicago Blizzard, oil on canvas, 1920s.                                                                                       $42,500  D

45       Wiggins, Winter Along Central Park, oil on canvas, 1930s.                                                                                       $40,000  C

43       Wiggins, Fifth Avenue Storm, oil on canvas board.                                                                                               $37,500  C

69       Arthur Dove, Patent Cereals Company, Geneva, New York, watercolor, circa 1938.                                                 $37,500  C

115     Paul Cadmus, Seated Male Nude (NM 3), crayon, 1965.                                                                                       $30,000  C

95**   Robert Barrell, Cat and Bird, oil on gesso board, 1942.                                                                                       $23,750  D

116     Cadmus, Reclining Male Nude (NM 26), chalks, 1966.                                                                                         $22,500  C

65       Joseph Stella, Tropical Flowers, color pastels, 1930s.                                                                                           $18,750  C

48       John Marin, Sunset, Manhattan, color pencil and pencil.                                                                                                  $17,500  C

78       Howard Cook, Western Mountain Landscape, oil on canvas, with Mountain Landscape, pen and brush                  $16,250  D

           and black ink.         

124     Robert Bliss, Reclining Boy, oil on panel, 1968.                                                                                                    $13,750  C

117     Cadmus, Resting Male Nude (NM 43 b), chalks.                                                                                                    $12,500  C

12       Newell Convers Wyeth, View of a Destroyed Town, World War I, charcoal, late 1910s.                                          $11,875  C

39*     Elsie Driggs, Figures Fighting (The Mob), watercolor and pencil, 1929.                                                                  $11,250  C

2         Winslow Homer, Studies of Men in Hats, pencil on paper, with a study of a sailboat, verso.                                   $8,750    C

158     Saul Steinberg, Untitled (Illustration for Noilly Prat), pen and black ink, 1956.                                                      $8,750    D

KEY:      C = Collector; D = Dealer; I = Institution; * = Auction Record; ** = First Known Appearance of Work by Artist at Auction