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 Title: Skinner American & European Paintings & Prints  

Auction held in: Boston

Sale Date:  3/6/09

Sale No: 2446 

No. of Lots: 858

No. of Pages: 284

Condition:  Very Good With Normal Wear

Prints & Photography
Kicking off the sale at noon on the 6th is a fine selection of prints and photography.  Featured prints include Francisco de Goya’s LOS DESASTRES DE LA GUERRA (lot 73, est. $30/50,000) – eighty plates first edition; Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s Selbstbildnis (lot 196, est. $5/7,000) coming to Skinner from a private New England estate; Andy Warhol’s A Gold Book (lot 232, est. $7/9,000); Arthur Wesley Dow’s Newbury Willows (lot 62, est. $1/1,500); and after Samuel A. Kilbourne, twelve plates from GAME FISHES OF THE UNITED STATES (lot 110, est. $5/7,000) published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1879. 

Also of note are several works by Pablo Picasso including Femme vue de dos (lot 172, est. $4/6,000) from the edition of 25, and Le vieux roi (lot 173, est. $2/4,000), both from a private collection by family descent of Lewis H. Weinstein of Boston.  Rounding out the offerings are several works by Joan Miró such as Obra inèdita recent/A Portfolio of Eleven works (lot 140, est. $4/6,000) and L’Entraineuse-rouge (lot 141, est. $1,5/2,000).

Photography highlights include works by Harold Eugene Edgerton featuring Shooting the Apple (lot 264, est. $2,5/3,500) and Football Kick (lot 267, est. $3/5,000); Aaron Siskind’s Pleasures and Terror of Levitation 37 (lot 280, est. $3/5,000) and New York I (lot 279, est. $2/4,000); On the Ascent (lot 284, est. $5/700) and View of the Matterhorn (lot 286, est. $5/700) by Bradford Washburn; and Minor White’s Drid Williams, Capitol Reef, Utah (lot 290, est. $5/7,000) and Untitled (from Steely the Barb of Infinity) (lot 291, est. $3/5,000).

European Works 
Commencing at 4 p.m. is the paintings and sculpture session of the sale.  To start, works from European artists lead with Busy Harbor (lot 469, est. $3/5,000) by Louis Charles Verboeckhoven, provenance – Mandell’s Gallery, Norfolk, 1968; The Young Mother (lot 460, est. $3,5/4,000) by Paul Seignac, provenance – Cooling Galleries, London, 1967; and George Vicat Cole’s A Surrey Cornfield (lot 440, est. $12/18,000).  Also expected to draw great interest is Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Satyrs Observing Diana's Sleeping Nymphs (lot 409, est. $40/60,000), which was created in 1620 in Antwerp and likely completed as a proposal for a painting.  This work comes to Skinner from the private collection of Fred and Jann Kline.

American Paintings
Featured works by American masters include Clifford Grear Alexander’s Lords of the Land/A Spring Landscape (lot 591, est. $1,5/3,000); a tripartite cast-iron fireback with sunflower motif by Elihu Vedder (lot 715, est. $20/30,000); Vermont Farm by Luigi Lucioni (lot 597, est. $15/25,000); At the Garden Fountain (lot 719, est. $30/50,000) by Francis Coates Jones, best known for his figurative works and genre scenes; and John Leslie Breck’s Landscape with Cows at Pasture/An Impressionist Scene (lot 590, est. $20/30,000), which shows the dappled light effects that Breck mastered under Monet’s influence.  Several fine works by John Whorf, most from the collection of Samuel Eliot Codman, will also be offered including Nude in the Forest (lot 725, est. $15/25,000); Fishing Under the Falls (lot 552, est. $7/9,000); In the Deep Forest (lot 554, est. $7/9,000); Winter Morning (lot 601, est. $7/9,000); and Rain, Porte Saint-Martin, Paris (lot 656, est. $6/8,000).

Other American highlights include John Henry Twachtman’s Riverside Village, Normandy (lot 590A, est. $12/18,000); Laura Coombs Hills’ Water Lily (lot 720, est. $10/15,000) and Water Lilies (lot 724, est. $10/15,000); and George Caleb Bingham’s Horse Thief (lot 517, est. $175/200,000), which suggests a strong influence from Thomas Cole and the period of the Cole revival.  Several works by William Robinson Leigh, who was able to fuse his love of nature from childhood and his training from Munich with the rich subjects and surrounding of the American Southwest, will also be offered including Summer Hogan (lot 539, est. $20/30,000); Keams Canon, Arizona, alternatively titled Study No. 12, Compositions for Land of Navahos (lot 540, est. $20/30,000); Trading a Pendleton Blanket (lot 541, est. $20/30,000); and Zuni Girl (lot 542, est. $20/30,000).

Modern Art
Now a core focus of Skinner’s paintings department, many fine modern works will be up for bid.  Worth mentioning are Harry Bertoia’s Untitled [Small Split Bush] (lot 824, est. $15/25,000); Jean Lurcat’s Les Nuages Movement (lot 758, est. $2/4,000); Enrico Castellani’s Senzo Titolo (lot 778, est. $6/8,000) and Josef Albers’ Young Eagle (lot 761, est. $20/30,000), one of several works from the collection of architect Louis Albert McMillen to be offered. 

Still other noteworthy pieces include Satish Gujral’s Days of Glory (lot 749, est. $10/15,000), which relates to the struggle of displacement during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947; Herbert Bayer’s Untitled [Formulation in Red, Green and Periwinkle] (lot 777, est. $10/15,000), which is typical of Bayer’s geometric abstractions that suggest movement through purely formal means; and David Burliuk’s Flowers in Cuba (lot 828, est. $25/35,000), from the artist’s “Still Life” period (roughly 1940s to 1960s) and in the spirit of Van Gogh, whom Burliuk greatly admired. Credit: Skinner Press.

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