PHILADELPHIA — In three consecutive early December sales, Freeman’s American Art Week brought $3,908,835, reflecting the strength of the market for fine 20th- and 21st-century canvases, particularly women artists and Pennsylvania Impressionist works. An American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists auction on December 4 combined with strong results for the December 5 sale of the Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rifkin collection and with those for Collect: American Art, held on December 6, to produce the $3.9 million total.

“This week’s auctions broke a series of records for individual artists, from Susette Keast to Bo Bartlett,” said Chairman and Head of Freeman’s Fine Art department Alasdair Nichol. “We’re honored to have brought important single-owner collections to market in these sales, and we continue to see the impressive results of bringing such focused, narrative-driven collections to market.”

Held Sunday, December 4, Freeman’s American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists sale set new auction records for multiple artists, including Bo Bartlett, whose monumental 2015 canvas The Promised Land achieved top-lot status with the sum of $352,800. Competitive bidding by collectors from Maine to Georgia — where Bartlett is now based — pushed the painting’s result above its estimate.

William Herbert Dunton’s Grizzly Bear followed closely at $302,400, a remarkable price that exceeded the painting’s high estimate by six times — the product of a contest between 11 phone bidders, primarily West Coast collectors.

Sale prices likewise exceeded their estimates for landscapes by Edith Lucille Howard and Susette Keast, breaking records for the two Philadelphia Ten painters. Venetian Canal (Ponte dei Bareteri), an Italian scene by Jane Peterson, another woman artist who captured the attention of collectors, sold for $107,100.

Two paintings not only broke auction records, but attracted institutional interest: Emma Fordyce MacRae’s portrait Stelka sold for $69,300 to the James A. Michener Art Museum, and Isabel Cartwright’s A Garden by the Sea (Mrs. Starr Pierce’s Garden) achieved $35,280 and is headed to North Carolina’s Blowing Rock Art & History Museum.

A Beautiful Reality: The Fine Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rifkin, a sale held on December 5, posted an impressive 94% sell-through rate and was led by Charles Burchfield’s The Garden Path, which earned $119,700, nearly doubling its high estimate. Burchfield’s Country Church in June (Country Churchyard) likewise exceeded its estimate to attain $66,150.

The week’s final auction, Collect: American Art, which took place on December 6, was led by another Bo Bartlett canvas, Tar Man Study, which sold for $23,940. Louis Aston Knight’s Canal View Through Gate and Paul Sawyier’s Riverscape both soared past their estimates to achieve $20,160 and $19,530, respectively.

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