Auction Highlights
Alex Cooper’s March 4 sale of Important Antiques enjoyed a 25% online sell-through rate, with Asian art packing a noticeable punch. A grouping of four Chinese teakwood and hardstone ru yi (scepters), each measuring 21 inches long with attractive carved jade relief cabochons, brought a collective online price of $10,800 against an estimate of $200-$300.
Bidders participating through LiveAuctioneers added $277,186 to the sale total in Treadway’s March 4 sale of 20th Century Art & Design. A colorful woodblock print by Gustave Baumann (American, 1881-1971) titled Grandma Battlin’s Garden, numbered 33/125, sailed past its $4,000-$6,000 estimate to settle at $13,475.
Online purchases topped the $100,000 mark in Northgate Gallery’s March 3 Monumental Estate Auction. A rare and unusual circa-1840 architect’s desk with its recessed side and front panels painted with romantic pastoral scenes attracted 15 bids before selling online for $11,500.
Internet bids added $182,861 to Skinner’s March 2 auction of American & European Paintings and Prints, which featured a signed and numbered Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) screenprint on paper of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. This particular work, from his 1985 Reigning Queens edition, was created in the vivid pink-and-green motif Warhol favored in some of his portraits. It sold near the top of its estimate range to a LiveAuctioneers bidder for $14,700.
In Phillips de Pury’s Feb. 27 offering titled Contemporary Art: Under the Influence, 29 bids were lodged on a signed and dated Mel Ramos (b. 1935) graphite and colored pencil on paper artwork. Measuring 19¼ inches square, the work had been exhibited in 1965 at Modernism Inc. in San Francisco, and came with provenance from a private collection in Portugal. Against an estimate of $30,000-$40,000 it sold to an online bidder for a very impressive $110,250.
In Wittlin & Serfer’s Feb. 25 auction of Contemporary Fine Art, screen prints by masters like Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring were surpassed, pricewise, by a pencil-signed Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) screen print of a nude, executed in 1993 in an edition of 90. A LiveAuctioneers bidder paid $12,600 to own the coveted pop-art print.
