A stunning array of Western art will be available to bidders on April 12 and 13 during the annual Scottsdale Art Auction, now in its 20th year of bringing top-quality artwork to collectors. The lots are from the 1800s to the present day, from traditional artwork to contemporary, and priced from $1,000 to $7 million. 

Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), The Broken Rope, oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 36¼ in. Estimate: $5/7 million“We’re feeling very optimistic in the market and how 2024 is going so far,” says auction partner Brad Richardson. “We’ve seen some tremendously successful shows and sales recently that show there is always going to be an appetite for the highest-quality Western art out there.”

This year’s sale will feature 410 lots spread across two sessions and two days. The second session, which is where many of the major pieces with high estimates will be sold, will include a number of important works that are sure to entice bidders from all corners of the market. 

Tom Lovell (1909-1997), Cottonwood Gazette, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Estimate: $200/300,000

 

Eanger Irving Couse (1866-1936), Kachina Doll Maker, oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in. Estimate: $150/250,000

 

Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), Peaceful Morning, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. Estimate: $100/150,000

What is surely going to be the most-watched piece is Charles M. Russell’s 1904 oil painting The Broken Rope. The work appears in many books on the artist and is regarded as an important painting by many Russell scholars. Author Frederic G. Renner mentions the work in his 1976 book titled Charles M. Russell. “Many authorities feel that Russell’s greatest work was done between 1902 and 1916, the period of this fine action painting. At this time the artist was painting the scenes that he loved best and that delighted his most critical audience, his cowboy friends. To them, every detail in the painting, from the brand on the horse to the ring in the tail of the angry cow, helped tell the story. If they couldn’t name the cowboy to the right they could spot him for a Texan from his tapaderos. These stirrup coverings of heavy cowhide were used to protect the rider’s feet in the southern brush country, but were not used by Montana cowboys in the early days. The angora chaps, which the cowboys called ‘woolies’ were strictly ‘Montana,’ however. These were a real comfort in the winter or during the crisp days of the fall roundup,” Renner writes. “Russell’s admirers have always claimed ‘he was the only artist who could paint a horse with all four feet in the air and make’im look natural,’ a point well demonstrated in The Broken Rope.” 

John Clymer (1907-1989), Clearing the Palo Duro, oil on canvas, 24 x 48 in. Estimate: $175/275,000

The Broken Rope is estimated at $5 million to $7 million, making it the most significant Russell work to hit the market in the last decade. (Russell’s world auction record is $5.6 million, set in 2005.) Richardson notes that no other work at Scottsdale Art Auction has ever had a higher estimate. “Russells of this quality are so rare and so infrequently come up to auction that when they do pop up it really forces the true collectors to engage with it because they may never see anything at this level come up again,” he says. “It’s exciting for us because it’s been years since something of this size, date and importance arrived to the market.”

Other Russells in the sale include a complete set of 10 bronzes from the Trigg Silver Series (est. $8/12,000), the iconic bronze A Bronc Twister (est. $200/300,000), the watercolor Grizzly at Close Quarters (est. $800/1,200,000) and The Milk Creek Canyon Disaste[r] (est. $75/125,000), which is one of Russell’s earliest attributable works that may have been painted as early as 1879 when the artist was 15 years old.

Logan Maxwell Hagege, Pursuit of Happiness, oil on canvas mounted to board, 52 x 54 in. Estimate: $80/120,000

 

Winold Reiss (1886-1953), Indian Madonna, mixed media on paper, 29 x 21 in. Estimate: $25/35,000Elsewhere in the sale is Tom Lovell’s Cottonwood Gazette, showing a trio of Native Americans looking at pictographs carved into a tree trunk. The work, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000, is mentioned in the artist’s book, The Art of Tom Lovell: An Invitation to History. “Stolen horses and enemy scalps were measures of greatness among the warriors of the Great Plains. They were the trophies of battle, evidence of individual acts of bravery to be celebrated,” Lovell writes. “In 1840, a party of Cheyennes on a horse-stealing raid were attacked by Pawnees on the south fork of the Republican River. There were no survivors of the Cheyenne raiding party. The victorious Pawnees held a scalp dance near the battle site and recorded the event in pictographs on the trunk of a dead cottonwood tree. In this scene, a party of Sioux scouts reads about the fight. They will carry the tragic news to their Cheyenne allies. In the foreground are the ashes of the Pawnees’ scalp dance fire.”

Frederic Remington (1861-1909), The Cheyenne, bronze, 19¾ in. Estimate: $100/150,000

Another lot that is generating interest is Nicolai Fechin’s Carmelita, a portrait of a woman with distinctive features. In 1971, the work was loaned to what was then the Cowboy Hall of Fame (today the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum) in Oklahoma City by Hammer Galleries in New York City. The museum had set up a recreation of Fechin’s studio, and Carmelita hung in a space near his easel. The work remained on display through at least the early 1980s, where it was likely seen by millions of museum visitors. Later, upon the release of Mary N. Balcomb’s book Nicolai Fechin, small castings of Carmelita’s face, made from a 1940 clay by Fechin, were made in bronze to be offered with limited editions of the book. Few works by the artist are as well known or so widely seen. The painting is estimated at $300,000 to $500,000.

Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955), Carmelita, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in. Estimate: $300/500,000

Three John Clymer paintings will be offered: Trading Down the Sweetwater (est. $90/120,000), Buffalo Scouts (est. $50/75,000) and Clearing the Palo Duro (est. $175/275,000), which shows a buffalo stampede erupting through the prairie. Other artists from Clymer’s era represented in the sale include James Reynolds, Robert Lougheed, Joe Beeler and Frank McCarthy, whose action scenes should excite collectors of his work.  

Edward Borein (1872-1945), Navajos at the Watering Hole, pen and ink on paper, 23 x 19 in. Estimate: $65/85,000

The auction house routinely gets high-quality G. Harvey pieces and this year is no exception with two major paintings: Boot Top Crossing (est. $75/100,000) and Tracks Below the Rim(est. $75/100,000), both of which show quintessential Harvey scenes. 

 Living artists in the sale include Eric Bowman, Kyle Polzin, Z.S. Liang, Phil Epp, Colt Idol, John Moyers, Don Oelze, Jerry Jordan and John Coleman. Mark Maggiori, whose auction numbers continue to climb, will have sketches and oil paintings offered. One of the larger oils is The Crossing, a work that was shown at the 2018 Masters of the American West in Los Angeles. Another artist whose auction numbers are steadily increasing is California painter Logan Maxwell Hagege, who has two pieces in the sale. One of them is Pursuit of Happiness (est. $80/120,000), which was featured on the February 2018 cover of Western Art Collector. Martin Grelle will have several works available, including Distant Signal, a piece created for the Quest for the West at the Eiteljorg Museum in 2015.

G. Harvey (1933-2017), Tracks Below the Rim, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in. Estimate: $75/100,000

Other lots include a magnificent horse scene from Carl Oscar Borg, several Native American works by Olaf C. Seltzer, landscapes and figures from Maynard Dixon, a moonrise painting from Frank Tenney Johnson, a stunning Edward Borein drawing on paper, two beautiful and colorful portraits by Winold Reiss, two major works from Eanger Irving Couse, a Paul Calle trapper painting, Harry Jackson bronzes and important wildlife work by Bob Kuhn, David Shepherd and Wilhelm Kuhnert. There is also a phenomenal William R. Leigh painting, Pack Trip (Rough Going), being offered with estimates of $250,000 to $450,000.

Olaf C. Seltzer (1877-1957), Scouts at Waterhole, watercolor, 17 x 22½ in. Estimate: $25/35,000

Bidding is available in the room the day of the sale, by phone, absentee bidding and also online on the auction house’s proprietary platform. Both sessions will start at 12:30 p.m., on April 12 and 13. —

Scottsdale Art Auction
April 12-13, 2024
• Session I, April 12, 12:30 p.m.
• Session II, April 13, 12:30 p.m.
7176 Main Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
(480) 945-0225, www.scottsdaleartauction.com 

Powered by Froala Editor