NEW ORLEANS — Crescent City Auction Gallery’s Important March Estates Auction runs Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9, and includes lots as diverse as 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church icons and a Louis XV-style Art Nouveau bronze dore chandelier. However, it is the local talent that takes the spotlight at the two-day sale. The catalogs are now open for bidding at LiveAuctioneers.
George Rodrigue (1944-2013) began painting in the 1960s and focused on local Louisiana landscapes and other historic Louisiana historical scenes and events. But when he found his ultimate muse in his Blue Dog, he catapulted to international fame and wealth. The sale includes seven silkscreen prints featuring the wide-eyed pup in various Christmas-themed designs, ranging in estimates as low as $500 and as high as $2,000.
Truly Rudy is the top-estimated Rodrigue lot at $1,000-$2,000. Like all the prints, it is signed by the artist and numbered, in this case, 43 of a 350-piece run. On the more affordable side is Sweet Like You, a screen print with numerous floating blue dog heads around Christmas candy canes and holly. It is estimated at $500-$900 and is numbered 104 of 150.
Jim Blanchard (b. 1955-) bills himself as an “architectural archival artist,” meaning his paintings are of buildings — Louisiana buildings in particular. John Kemp, writing in Louisiana Cultural Vistas, said, “[Blanchard] pursues his paintings with the mathematic exactness of the architect’s rendering, and the visual elegance of an artist’s brush.”
Crescent City has five Blanchard original watercolors on paper, all estimated at $1,500-$2,500, and each is signed by the artist and accompanied by his book, Jim Blanchard’s Magnificent Obsessions: New Orleans Business and Residences, 300 Years of New Orleans Architecture.
Marine Hospital, Natchez is dated 1993 and is classic Blanchard: dead-on flat perspective with incredible detail. Rev. John Bliss Warren House [Maple Street] is undated. And Van Court Townhouse is also from 1993. All Blanchard originals come in handsome frames.
