Taos artists beat estimates in Scottsdale sale
On August 23, Scottsdale Art Auction presented a live online auction featuring 428 lots of Western art. The works, which hung in the auction house’s Arizona gallery leading up to the online sale, featured a wide variety of material from all around the West, Southwest and even from the broader category of American art. More than 2,500 people registered for the sale, which helped it bring in more than $2.5 million in sales. Highlights from the sale were two paintings by Taos Society of Artists founders: Eanger Irving Couse’s Song of the Blue Aspens (est. $60/90,000) that sold for $117,000 and Joseph Henry Sharp’s Before the Hunt, Glorieta Forest (est. $65/95,000) that sold for $111,000. Other works that sold over estimates were by Logan Maxwell Hagege, Norman Rockwell, Martin Grelle and Nicolai Fechin, whose small pencil drawing with a high estimate of $9,000 sold for $46,000.
Let this be a friendly reminder not to sleep on these online sales. Scottsdale Art Auction hosts online-only sales, as does Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Jackson Hole Art Auction, Heritage Auctions, John Moran Auctioneers, Morphy Auctions, Bonhams Skinner, Freeman’s | Hindman and many others. The lots in these sales are not thrift-store finds or damaged paintings from grandma’s closets; the work is just as good as the big annual sales held in ballrooms and auction showrooms all around the country. And the best past: you can bid and watch the sale from your bathrobe. Covid may have supercharged online sales in 2020 and 2021, but they are a growing part of the market and they’re here to stay. —
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