Art at Auction: Eyes on Shannon’s Oct. 29 sale
Be still my heart: Shannon’s twice annual sale of American Art is coming up on October 29th, and, judging from the newly posted online catalog, there are some wonderful gems coming up for auction. Shannon’s, to me, also represents a kind of bellwether for the American Art market, and so I will be watching it closely.
Looking back to the auctions of late summer and early fall that featured American Art, I noticed a pattern amongst the unsold lots — a good many of them fell in the estimated range of the upper four figures to lower five figure paintings. That is, what seems to have been missing from these auctions is a large pool of buyers of the 10k painting. Shannon’s Oct 29 auction, however, includes a large number of works estimated in this range, and I’m hoping that the volume and quality of these works are enough to draw the 10k buyer out of hiding.
Case in point: Lot 82, Allen Tucker, New Mexico Landscape, 1925.
Tucker, an artist known for his expressionist landscapes which strongly echo Van Gogh, is hot. He was an artist based in New England, where he painted the majority of his work. He did, however, make painting trips to the Taos art colony in the 1920s, a period in New Mexico art that is also hot. I cannot find, among his auction records, another equivalent example of New Mexico subject matter, but I can tell you, this pairing is on fire. Throw in a conservative auction estimate of 8-12k, and if that doesn’t bring out the 10k buyer, then I will, on the spot, declare them all dead.
[...] for my earlier declaration that if the Tucker painting didn’t sell, it would be a marker for the death of the 10k [...]