Lot 48: Bernard M. Keyes (1898-1973), ‘The Coral Necklace,’ oil on canvas, signed lower left. Gray’s Auctioneers image.
Contemporary highlights include lot 74, King of the Birds, a massive, four-panel, mixed media piece by Todd Murphy, which measures 12 feet high by 16 feet wide. The work depicts a woman grasping a model airplane, posed above a gaggle of geese. Through the combination of media forms, the work is a brooding interplay of light and texture. Murphy was born in Chicago and began his career in Atlanta. Quickly rising to international acclaim, his work is described as having “underlying artistic themes of metamorphosis, allusion, and life-in-the-moment.” Murphy’s work is in many private, corporate and museum collections.
Helen Beling’s bronze sculpture, Business is Bad, lot 186, is another contemporary highlight. Beling’s work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the Butler Institute of American Art among many others. Several of her sculptures were commissioned by synagogues, including a 26-foot-long Exodus for Temple Emanu-El in Yonkers, N.Y.
Collectors will be also be excited to find lot 175, an antique map over 200 years old dating from 1775, detailing North and South Carolina and their Indian frontiers by Henry Mouzon. Mouzon’s map became an important military asset for those fighting in the Southern theater of operations during the American Revolutionary War. The copy of the Mouzon map carried by George Washington is preserved at the American Geographical Society Library in Milwaukee. The copy of the Mouzon map carried by Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, is preserved at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Mouzon map remained the chief map of the region until the 1808 map of North Carolina by Price & Strother, and the 1822 map of South Carolina by John Wilson.
Also in the upcoming auction Guillermo Castano Ramirez shows off his skills in lost wax technique in his work titled Geronimo, The Price in Blood too High – The Surrender, lot 185. The sinuous figures, along with the opulent rending of fabric, make the sculpture a dynamic rendering of texture and motion. Moving around the object, the work reveals new shapes, and forms from each angle, revealing a true mastery in the sculptor’s compositional awareness.
A large collection of paintings and decorative pieces from a single estate are also included in the sale. Notable artists include Tressa Benson’s Portrait of a Lady, lot 51, and Bernard Keyes, The Coral Necklace, lot 48. Keyes, an artist of the Boston School, depicts a well-dressed woman resting in a chair and gracefully playing with the coral necklace around her neck.
Condition reports will be provided upon request.
For more information contact Serena Harragin at 216-458-7695, or by email at serena@graysauctioneers.com.
ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE
Lot 48: Bernard M. Keyes (1898-1973), ‘The Coral Necklace,’ oil on canvas, signed lower left. Gray’s Auctioneers image. Lot 74: Todd Murphy (b.1962), ‘King of Birds’ (1990), mixed media on board. Gray’s Auctioneers image. Lot 175: Henry Mouzon (1741-1807), ‘An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina and their Indian Frontiers,’ copper engraving on laid paper with hand-colored outlines. Gray’s Auctioneers image.
