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Bonhams held a $2.27m sale of California and Western art on August 1st which followed the annual Coeur d’Alene Auction which made $16.08m in sales when 95% of the 323 lots found buyers. The top lot in Idaho was William Leigh’s A Close Call which sold for $1.15m.
Other top lots were works by Carl Rungius, Thomas Moran, Charles M. Russell and Howard Terpning.
Bonhams led with a $223k painting of the Jungfrau in Switzerland by Edgar Payne.
The annual Couer d’Alene auction of Western art held in Reno, Nevada on Friday made $28.5m in hammer prices with an astonishing 96% of the 308 lots sold. That’s only 12 lots that failed to find buyers. Nearly a quarter of the works sold above the high estimate.
Last year’s sale was $18m and there were 600 registered bidders participating in the event, according to the AP.
One of the biggest surprises of the auction was the $1.7 million that Howard Terpning’s 1989 painting “Telling of Legends” fetched, according to organizers. The painting by the Tucson, Ariz., artist features two American Indians sitting on a bluff overlooking the prairie.
“That’s a whopper for a living Western artist,” Overby said, adding it was expected to sell for between $600,000 and $900,000.
Remington painting draws $5.6 million at Nevada auction (Fox News)
With sale totals as high as $37m in 2008 and as low as $9.2m last year, the Couer d’Alene auction, Western art’s top sale, brought in $16.7m this year:
A summer ritual since 1985, the Coeur d’Alene auction (which kept its name, despite moving from Idaho to Nevada a decade ago) is basically Art Basel for the ranching and oil set, who come for the Western camaraderie as well as for the art.
Among those expected this year is Idaho lumber magnate Marc Brinkmeyer, who primarily collects contemporary Western works. Mr. Brinkmeyer has attended the auction for close to 15 years: “Usually I come home with more than I bargained for. It’s good for us collectors that the market’s down a little bit.”
At Saturday’s sale, just under 300 lots will be hammered down in roughly five hours, with spotters in the room pointing out bidders with enthusiastic “yips” and “has.”
Art of the West Rounded Up for a Rebound (Wall Street Journal)
