SOTHEBY’S SPRING AUCTION OF AMERICAN ART: George O’Keeffe: WHITE CALLA LILY & Heade, Avery, Peto, Sargent

Sotheby’s annual spring auction of  American Art will be held in New  York on 20 May 2015. The sale is highlighted by White Calla Lily, an iconic flower painting by Georgia  O’Keeffe that the artist kept in her own collection until her death in  1986, and which has remained in the same private collection for more  than two decades. 

   
WHITE CALLA LILY   

Following the sale of Georgia O’Keeffe’s 



Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 for $44.4 million at  Sotheby’s New York in November 2014 – 


more than three times the previous auction record for any  work by a female artist – the May sale is led by another iconic flower painting by the artist:  White  Calla Lily from 1927 (above, estimate $8–12 million).  Between 1918 and 1932 O’Keeffe executed  over 200 flower paintings, but it was arguably in the calla lily that the artist found her ideal motif, one  that provided the perfect synthesis of subject and form that now defines her most celebrated work.  The artist clearly held the present painting in high regard, as she kept it in her personal collection  until her death in 1986. In fact, the back of the painting features her star device, which she often  used to mark her favored pieces. White Calla Lily  was subsequently acquired by the present owner in 1994 from Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New  Mexico, and has not been shown in public since.   


 Martin Johnson Heade

The group is led by Heade’s  Two Fishermen in the Marsh, at Sunset, which depicts the  scenic salt marshes along the Northeastern coast (estimate $700,000–1 million). These  marshes were among the artist’s favorite and most highly-acclaimed subjects, accounting for a  significant portion of his  oeuvre .

 MILTON AVERY: MODERN MASTER  

 Following the sale of Milton Avery’s   

March and Sally Outdoors 

at Sotheby’s New York in May 2014 for a  record-setting $5.7 million, the upcoming auction will offer a strong group of four works by the artist. The  group is led by two spectacular landscapes inspired by  the artist’s travels:   

Spring in Vermont from 1945,  influenced by his family’s regular travels to the town of Jamaica (estimate $1.5–2.5 million), 

and Beach House (Porch and Chairs) from 1944, which has remained in the same private collection for nearly  three decades (estimate $1–1.5 million).   

The sale also offers two works by Avery from  The Goldwyn Family Collection, which Sotheby’s will offer across a series of sales in 2015. While the Goldwyn family is synonymous with the film industry,  many will discover in these sales that their creative vision also extended to collecting fine art. The American Art sale includes Avery’s  

Reclining Female (estimate $600/800,000) 

 and  Mexican Washerwoman (estimate $400/600,000),  both of which were acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. –  influential producer and champion of the inde pendent film movement in the United States.  

 A REDISCOVERED  TROMPE-L’OEIL PAINTING BY JOHN FREDERICK PETO  

While  trompe-l’oeil  has clear art historical precedents in antiquity  as well as 17 th and 18 th century Europe, Peto skillfully adapts the  technique to 19 th century America in Old Time Letter Rack from 1894 (estimate $800,0 00–1.2 million). He fills the composition  with autobiographical referenc es: his inclusion of envelopes  postmarked Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, as well as another  addressed to Peto himself in Island Heights, New Jersey and the copy of Dayton’s  Evening Herald  newspaper, refer to the period in the late 1880s and early 1890s during which he traveled regularly  between Ohio and New Jersey.  Old Time Letter Rack was  discovered in California in 2006; its previous history is unknown, as is typical of many of his works. 

 WORKS ON PAPER BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT   

The May auction features a selection of four beautiful  works on paper by John Singer Sargent that document  the extensive travels for which he is well-known. The  group is led by  

The Giudecca (A Summer Day on the  Giudecca, Venice) (estimate $600/800,000),   

which has not been exhibited publicly for more than a  century, having last been on view in 1908 at the New  English Art Club in London.   

Mrs. Ralph Curtis with her  Daughter, Sylvia depicts the mother and daughter on the terrace of the Villa Amicilia in Villa  Amicitia in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the South of France (estimate $300/500,000). Mrs. Curtis’s father- in-law, Daniel Curtis, was Sargent’s cousin, and Sylvia was the artist’s goddaughter. The work’s  inscription indicates that Sargent gift ed the watercolor to Daniel’s wife.

 NORMAN ROCKWELL’S  THE BOOKWORM , FROM THE WARSHAWSKY COLLECTION 

Sotheby’s will present The  Warshawsky Collection – a  landmark offering of Tiffany, Pre-War Design and fine art –  this May in New York, assembled from the 1960s through the  ‘90s by noted Chicago busine ssman Roy Warshawsky and his  wife Sarita. The collection is led by Norman Rockwell’s  The  Bookworm from 1926, which is considered a tribute to  German artist Carl Spitzweg’s painting  Der Bücherwurm from  1852 (estimate $1.5–2.5 million). Rockwell’s homage  reverses the stance of the original painting both literally and  figuratively: whereas Spitzweg  depicts a respectably-dressed  German burgher in a large library, Rockwell paints an  eccentric and absentminded reader lost amongst his findings  at an outdoor bookstand.