Folks at one of my favorite auction houses were exceedingly excited a week or so ago over the immense sale of a painting by landscape artist Alfred Thompson Bricher.
They showed off the painting and the price on their website. One of the workers told the story of the sale to my auction buddy Janet and me. Another bidder who normally buys modern glass came up to us to recount how he walked in on the bidding when it was at $75,000. We had left the auction by the time the bidding had started the week before, but I can imagine the excitement and awe in the room as the price raced up to nearly $100,000.
This is not one of those fancy New York auction houses. Most of the stuff they sell here is laid out on tables, and goes for $5 or a little more. But this was their Decorative Arts sale, and usually the merchandise fetches a bit more money, into the thousands (they also have posted on their site several pieces of modern furniture that sold in that range). The auction houses I attend normally post high bids like this on their sites as a way to promote their services to potential clients. It’s a way to show them how much they can get for those treasures in the basement or attic.
Bricher’s watercolor of a woman reading a book at the beach on a bright summer day sold for $92,000. That was an “auction success,” the website noted. I believe the high bidder was actually in the audience and not on the phone – which is usually the case at some auction houses. Phone-bidding is a very anonymous undertaking.
The Bricher piece was a coup for this auction house. He was a maritime painter who lived during the 19th century (1837-1908), and was one of the last artists of the Hudson River School, a group of painters who captured the naturalness of the Hudson River Valley in New York and man’s relation to it. Largely self-taught, Bricher focused on his eye on the seacoast along Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. His works “convey reflective and atmospheric effects of light on water and air at different times of the day and under varying weather conditions. As a watercolorist, he also depicted good-looking female figures,” according to the website askart.com.
His works are in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Orlando Museum of Art, among others.
The watercolor at this auction house has a soothing serenity that I saw in others of his works on the web. Take a look at some of them at this art gallery in New York and this online art site.
