DALLAS – Heritage Auctions will soon hold one of the most comprehensive – and jubilant – American art events in recent memory. In the words of Senior Vice President Aviva Lehmann, the May 10 American Art Signature® Auction, featuring 150 works, is “a museum-quality auction showing off our strength and ability to curate a perfect sale that covers every genre of American art.” Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

Befitting such an event, Heritage is proud to offer Rembrandt Peale’s circa-1855 portrait of this country’s first president – and among the most iconic images in this country’s history. This Washington painting, which is estimated at $200,000-$300,000, is extraordinarily significant, too, as it comes from the collection of Melvin “Pete” Mark, the prominent Portland real estate executive and philanthropist who was also among this country’s preeminent collectors of presidential artifacts and American historical treasures.

Mark’s American treasures, an assemblage so important the Oregon Historical Society hosted five different exhibits during the years, are being offered by Heritage Auctions on May 7. But it would not be an American art auction without the Washington portrait, which Lehmann says is among the finest Peales to reach market, especially in terms of condition and provenance.

“I love it,” she said. “It almost comforts me, as Peale painted Washington in [a] way that’s both paternal and regal – that three-quarter stance, that little smile. I find it a little reassuring, in a way, this portrait of a Founding Father from an artist who so dearly valued American history.”

This auction also features several masterworks from J.C. Leyendecker, who is having his moment in the sun with record-setting sales and the documentary short Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker.

Heritage is particularly honored to present First Long Suit, which he painted for the Sept. 18, 1937 cover for The Saturday Evening Post. Estimated at $300,000-$500,000, it’s a definitive work from the artist best known for his “paintings of fashionable men and women in a sleek, idealized style,” as the Norman Rockwell Museum puts it. But as Lehmann notes, this almost Rockwellian work, in which a mother dabs away a tear while her young son tries on big-boy trousers, is far more than just one of the fashion-ad illustrations Leyendecker was often commissioned to paint by clothing-makers Arrow and Kuppenheimer.

“Leyendecker is the master of welcoming his viewer into a scene and making us relate to that moment,” she said. “Here, he offers the impeccable detail of watching a child grow up right before their eyes. It’s such a heartfelt, bittersweet moment that shows him to be, within the space of a single image, a masterful storyteller along the lines of Rockwell. First Long Suit is easily the most complex Leyendecker composition to come to market in a long time.”

The May 10 auction also features a much earlier but no less significant Leyendecker: Playing Hooky, which first appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on June 13, 1914. That was just a few months before the appearance of the artist’s Beat-up Boy, Football Hero, which sold at Heritage Auctions one year ago for a record-setting $4,121,250, the first Leyendecker to surpass seven figures.

Playing Hooky is among the touching, whimsical works painted by the artist during this period, most notable for the creation of his beloved New Year’s Baby for The Post. Looking at this portrait of the young boy startled by the nibble on the other end of the line, it’s little wonder collectors and historians often consider Leyendecker’s paintings of children among his finest works.

And this painting in particular has an astonishing backstory: Its current owner inherited it from her father, who was among those charged with cleaning out Leyendecker’s New Rochelle estate upon his death in 1951. The artist’s sister was throwing away his artwork, including Playing Hooky, and the consignor’s father rescued it from the garbage. Seldom has the phrase “trash to treasure” meant more. Playing Hooky has an estimate of $200,000-$300,000.

There has never been any dispute about the significance of Jervis McEntee’s 1862 oil on canvas The Fire of Leaves, which is not merely among the finest and most important masterworks by the artist to ever come to market, but a simple, pointed nod to the ongoing Civil War.

This work, featuring two boys – friends, perhaps, or rivals meant to represent North and South – sitting next to a campfire amid a rugged, tranquil, luminous landscape, is almost a work of “wishful thinking,” says Lehmann, the artist’s subtle but impactful way of “begging his country to come to peace.”

The Fire of Leaves has been displayed in myriad exhibitions, most recently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York only nine years ago, as one of the centerpieces of “The Civil War and American Art.” It carries an estimate of $150,000-$250,000.

Another oft-exhibited work in this auction is something far more contemporary: George Tooker’s Un Ballo in Maschera, a tempera on gessoed board laid on board from 1982, estimated at $200,000-$300,000. Most recently displayed at the Columbus Museum of Art for a Tooker retrospective, this is among the artist’s most reproduced works, where neoclassicism and modernism collide to make something dreamlike and surreal. And it’s not as though Tooker’s pieces often come to market: Given his use of tempera, and his slow and meticulous methods, he produced only a couple of paintings each year.

“So much skill and love and time goes into a work like this,” said Lehmann. “And it’s such a unique niche in the arena of American art that I am so excited we have this work in this sale.”

As though one needed further proof every work in this auction is a highlight, look no further than the children’s-books illustrations, among them Maurice Sendak’s Let the Wild Rumpus Start! (Happy Birthday Wild Things!), painted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Where the Wild Things Are in 1988. It is estimated at $120,000-$180,000.

“Everyone loves Sendak, and it’s high time for him to climb to the level of Rockwell,” Lehmann said. “For this auction I wanted pieces that were joyful – works that feel like spring, that make you happy, and that is most decidedly what Sendak does.”

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