The day before the 2020 March in Montana sale, the state of Montana dealt the sale a blow by shutting down large in-person gatherings. The March in Montana crew, made up of just a dozen people, pushed ahead and turned out a stellar sale. So when it was time to put on the 2021 sale, fate was ready to throw another curve ball, but this one spun in the sale’s favor: just two days before the sale, Montana’s Cascade County opened up venues to hold large in-person gatherings.
Clyde Aspevig, Planetary Alignment, oil on board, 30 x 36” Estimate: $10/15,000 SOLD: $50,150
And March in Montana was ready. As were bidders, who purchased 99 percent of the sale’s 744 lots—an unheard-of sell-through for the auction’s 34-year history. Overall, the sale realized more than $2.5 million. “The energy was off the charts and we were pleasantly surprised at the numbers of new collectors, not only to our sale but to the Western market in general,” the auction noted in a statement. “If this is what life after Covid looks like, sign us up!”
Bidders gather for the March in Montana sale in Great Falls, Montana.
Two of the top lots in the sale, both of which were world auction records for the artists, were paintings by lesser-known artists. Ty Barhaug’s incredible snow scene with a string of pack horses, Pure Altitude, sold for $64,900, seven times over its high estimate of $8,000; and Canadian painter Jack King’s Fresh Mounts, showing a herd of horses amid the sun and dust of the desert, sold for $38,350, nearly fives times over its high estimate of $7,000.
Ty Barhaug, Pure Altitude, oil on board, 21 x 36” Estimate: $6/8,000 SOLD: $64,900
Other top lots include Clyde Aspevig’s Planetary Alignment (est. $10/15,000) that sold for $50,150, Don Oelze’s The Hunted and the Hungry (est. $15/25,000) that sold for $44,250, William Gollings’ The Line Riders (est. $20/40,000) that sold for $56,050, and Joseph Henry Sharp’s Taos Landscape (est. $60/90,000) that sold for $64,900.
Works by Bob Scriver, Ace Powell, Earle Heikka, Newman Myrah and John L. Clarke also performed strongly, as did a large collection of Native American weavings.
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