DALLAS – Five records were set to help drive the final total for Heritage Auctions’ American Auction to $5,323,688 on Nov. 1. The sale achieved particularly strong results in Golden Age Illustration Art.
Multiple bidders drove Frederic Remington’s The Bronco Buster to a final selling price of $615,000. The rare 1.5-scale work is one of just 19 casts made from a large-scale plaster model of his iconic sculpture; others can be found in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.
Andrew Newell Wyeth’s Cold Spell, 1965 also drew numerous bids before closing at $250,000. Cold Spell hung in the artist’s bedroom until 1966, when the consignor’s grandmother bought it directly from the artist.
Frederick Carl Frieseke’s En Promenade, 1908, and Joseph Christian Leyendecker’s Ice Skaters, The Popular Magazine cover, March 1909, each caught the attention of several bidders before finishing at $225,000.
Heritage continues to draw top prices from Golden Age Illustration Art, as was the case with Norman Rockwell The Night Before Christmas (Santa Peering over Chair at Sleeping Child), Literary Digest magazine cover, Dec. 22, 1923, which brought $375,000, Joseph Leyendecker’s Ice Skaters ($112,500 – a record for the highest price at auction for the artist’s works that did not appear on a Saturday Evening Post cover) and Howard Pyle’s Becky Sharp and Lord Steyne, Pictures from Thackeray at $96,875.
Of the records that were set, four were in Illustration Art. The new records included:
– $206,250: Thorton Utz Love’s Lost Child at the Information Booth, The Saturday Evening Post cover, Dec. 20, 1958 – a new auction record for the artist.
– $87,500: George Hughes’ Dinner Party, The Saturday Evening Post cover, Nov. 11, 1961 – a new auction record for the artist.
– $58,750: John Stobart’s San Francisco Cowell’s Wharf, 1981.
– $30,000: Harold Anderson’s Kitchen Haircut, The Saturday Evening Post cover, Nov. 11, 1933 – a new auction record for the artist.
