NEW MARKET, Tenn. (ACNI) – In a Sept. 15 auction held at John W. Coker’s Tennessee gallery, a Mary Cassatt portrait of a mother and her young daughter sold for just under the million-dollar-mark. The buyer, who paid $990,000 (inclusive of 10 percent buyer’s premium) was a well-known California art dealer and collector. The sale grossed $1.82 million.

Publicized as one of the top artworks in the 84-lot auction, the Cassatt painting – a pastel on paper titled Simone Seated on the Grass Next to Her Mother – had been entered in the sale with a $400,000-$700,000 estimate. It was one of the prized pictures in the collection of the late Dr. Albert K. Chapman, former president and CEO of Eastman Kodak.

The saleroom “sizzled with excitement,” gallery owner John Coker told Auction Central News. “It was a fresh to the market collection that had been held privately and out of view for many decades. Bidders participated from points as far afield as Germany and California. There were even two dealers at the Paris Biennale who interrupted their business on the event’s opening day to bid by phone.”

The electronic catalog on LiveAuctioneers.com, which also provided the Internet live bidding, was heavily viewed in the weeks leading up to the sale.

Coker related that a number of art dealers told him after the auction that the prices realized on the paintings were considerably higher than what they might have gotten for them in New York. “One person commented that they were amazed at our results, because some art auctions these days have a buy-in rate of 80 percent,” Coker said. “This sale held in our Tennessee gallery made me a firm believer that you can be successful and reach an international audience from anywhere if you use the power of advertising and the Internet.”

A full postsale report will appear in the near future on Auction Central News.

Click here to view the fully illustrated catalog for this sale, complete with prices realized.