By Carter B. Horsley

This American Paintings auction is the first in the past few seasons to offer a strong selection of works in all the popular categories of collecting in this field, from Hudson River School landscapes to still lifes to Western art to Impressionism to the Moderns.

The highlight of the auction, shown above, is Lot 132, "Library," a 72 1/2-by-52 5/8-inch oil on canvas, by Gerald Murphy (1888-1964), which is the cover illustration of the catalogue. Murphy's existing oeuvre is very small, perhaps only 16 paintings, and, according to the catalogue, this "is the first ever offered at auction. Despite his small oeuvre, Murphy is very highly regarded as a superb Precisionist painter and the work has a conservative estimate of $3,000,000 to $5,000,000. It failed to sell.

Murphy and his wife, Sara Wiborg Murphy, moved to Paris in 1921 and very quickly became important figures in the American expatriate community there and their friends included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos.

Born in Boston, he moved to New York when his father relocated his company, Mark Cross & Co. He was educated at Hotchkiss and Andover and graduated from Yale University in 1912. The catalogue notes that as a student Murphy had no interest in art and "was discouraged from pursuing the arts by his dislike of Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, which he viewed on numerous childhood trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

"Murphy became his brief and shining career as a painter when he saw a group of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Gris in the Paul Rosenberg Gallery of the Rue La Boitie shortly after arriving in Paris….'My reaction to the color and form was immediate. To me three was something in these painting was instantly sympathetic and comprehensible.' He remembers telling his wife, Sara, 'If that's painting, that's what I want to do,' the catalogue noted in a quotation of W. Rubin's 1974 book, "The Paintings of Gerald Murphy."

The catalogue's entry continues with the following commentary:

"Exhilarated by his discovery, Murphy and Sara immediately enrolled in painting lessons with Natalia Goncharova, a peripheral member of the Russian Constructivist movement who had come to Paris with the famed Diaghilev Ballet. Up to that point, Murphy's only experience in the arts was derived from mechanical drawing courses that he completed during two years that he spent studying landscape architecture….His previous disinterest in the arts put Murphy in a unique situation; unlike other American painters who began formal training in American before setting sail for Paris, Murphy's knowledge of modernism came directly from Europe and is limited formal training contributed to the singular purity of his style. Deeply committed to his art, Murphy worked diligently to develop his own modern style Murphy's relationship with Goncharova was equally significant in that it put him in contact with the leading members of the Parisian avant-garde. His rare works were favored by painters, dancers, actors, and writers alike, and were exhibited annually at the Salons des Indépendents from 1923 to 1926. He generally produced two painting per year, as his methodical technique was slow and exacting. It was not unusual for him to work for months on a single painting, and is known to have gone so far as to paint the book bindings in Library…with a single-hair brush. Even more significant that Murphy's legendary biography is the pivotal role that he played in the history of modern painting. Léger was widely quoted as stating that 'Gerald Murphy is the only American painter in Paris.' Murphy's distinct painting style reflected the influence of Constructivism in its clarity and simplicity, Cubism in its incorporation of collage an schematic representation of space, and Futurism in its linearity and incorporation of text."

The painting was executed in 1927 and the catalogue notes that the "following year, Murphy's career was cut short when his youngest son, Patrick, contracted tuberculosis." "The artist," the catalogue continued, "dropped everything, including his painting, to move the family" to the Swiss Alps and devote himself to restoring his son's health.

Other major works in the auction include a major landscape by John La Farge, two very fine works by John Twachtman, some excellent works by John Singer Sargent, a lovely Thomas Moran, and a few works by Albert Bierstadt.

Lot 47, "The Last Valley - Paradise Rocks," is a 32 3/4-by-42 1/4-inch oil on canvas by John La Farge (1835-1910). It is a pendant to a very similar landscape, "Paradise Valley," that has a sheep in the foreground that is in the collection of the Terra Foundation for the Arts in Chicago. The catalogue notes that these two paintings stand as "precocious" precursors "of American landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the canvas makes a high point of his career."

The catalogue recounts that La Farge worked at a New York law firm until his father died and left him a nice inheritance that he used to move to Newport, Rhode Island, so that he could study with William Morris Hunt (1834-1879). La Farge, however, would become "disenchanted" with Hunt's methods and married Margaret Mason Perry, a granddaughter of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. The couple bought a house in downtown Newport and frequented "Paradise," a farming community in Middletown, R.I. After having two children, however, their finances dwindled and they "fled their downtown Newport house under cover of night to escape creditors, beginning a decade marked by frugal and peripatetic living," the catalogue wrote. La Farge suffered lead poisoning and paralysis of the hands in 1865 for almost a year. He began work on Paradise Valley in 1866 and this painting the following year.

The catalogue provides the following quotation from the artist about the two works:

"My programme was to paint from nature a portrait which was both novel and absolutely 'everydayish.' I therefore had to choose a special moment of the day and a special kind of weather at a special time of year when I could count on the effect being repeated. Hence, naturally, I painted just where I lived."

La Farge set up an "impromptu studio on a high vantage point on a ridge in the Paradise Hills overlooking Bishop Berkeley's Rock," about a mile from his house and at one point his studio/hut was vandalized and his picture damaged, according to the catalogue.

"Both works were quietly innovative paintings that broke dramatically with the landscape traditions of La Farge's contemporaries. 'From the very beginning,' writes the art historian Henry Adams, 'La Farge very consciously avoided the bombast of the Hudson River School. Which was reaching a climax at just this time in the huge panoramas of Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church. La Farge deliberately chose scenes that were spare and unspectacular, which he painted with visible brushwork that freely discloses the artist's touch.'…La Farge would always regard the canvas as among his finest achievements."

The work has an estimate of $1,200,000 to $1,800,000. It sold for $2,096,000 including the buyer's premium as do all results in this article to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) has produced some of the most extraordinarily beautiful and haunting paintings in the general category of American Impressionism, although his oeuvre is quite inconsistent. His finest works transcend pretty Impressionism and almost flirt with Futurism and abstraction. Lot 70 is a very fine example of Twachtman's talent. Entitled "Two Children in a Sailboat," it is an oil on canvas, 25 1/4 by 30 1/4 inches. It has a conservative estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. It sold for $545,000. While William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam get more attention as American Impressionists, neither has produced as innovative works as Twachtman, who remains greatly undervalued in the market.

The catalogue gives the following commentary:

"One of the most progressive painters of his day, John Henry Twachtman may have advanced the tenets of Impressionism further than any of his American contemporaries. He was an influential member of The Ten American Painters, a group which he helped organize with the intention of promoting pure painting. From its founding in 1897, The Ten, as they came to be known, offered annual exhibitions to highlight the kind of innovative work which became the hallmark of Twachtman's art….His primary subject was nature, most particularly the natural or cultivated landscape. Only rarely did he paint the human figure, and when he did so he also invariably painted his family, in much the same way that his landscapes also drew form his immediately surroundings….As noted by Twachtman's early biographer, Eliot Clark, the artist showed little interest in detailed renderings of the human figure. In Clark's view, the relationship of the figure to the landscape was all-important, and succeeded when unified by Twachtman's aesthetic sensibility. Clark wrote that 'the canvases which best Twachtman in this genre date from the Greenwich period, [as does in Two Children in a Sailboat], and are for the most part pictures of his immediate family,' adding that 'the painter finds his interest more in the attitude and suggested environment than in detailed delineation and likeness. He is interested particularly in the luminous envelopment of the figure and in the study of local color as modified by the dominant hue of the light.'" …These later works also tend to be amount the most artificially advanced paintings he produced - among them the present work, Two Children in a Sailboat. Here the landscape elements are simplified, almost abstracted to an expanse of water the suggestion of a rocky shoreline at the topmost edge of the canvas…The paint is applied with dash and seeming spontaneity, an effect enhanced by his decision to leave much of the raw canvass visible in the corners of the composition. Two children in a Sailboat directly relates to a very similar work, Sailing in the Mist {Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) also painted during the Greenwich years. Nearly identical in size, palette, and composition, they differ chiefly in the orientation of the boat to the view. …Most particularly, they share a dream-like quality, enhanced the by the artists' subtle equilibrium between his subject, tending toward abstraction, and his impressionist technique…."

The catalogue also provides the following quotation from Richard Boyle's book on the artist:

"Twachtman achieves a subdued and subtle poetry which extends beyond the particular method that conveys it. It is Impressionism, yes…, but it not the lush, bold and gregarious painting of the French or of such compatriots as Childe Hassam or Frank Benson. Twachtman's painting is full of 'contradiction and complexity.' A myriad of brushstrokes, a manifold set of colors and tones, combine somehow to give the impression of great simplicity; or, conversely, the rendering of a single tree or a pond or the glimpse of a small waterfall reveals an absorbing complexity of ideas and feelings. His pictures are often indicative of a kind of 'Less is more' philosophy."

The auction has another, smaller Twachtman, Lot 1, "Gloucester Scene," that is also very fine. An unsigned oil on board, 12 7/8 by 9 3/8 inches, it is conservatively estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. It sold for $76,375. While in Gloucester, Twachtman painted numerous night scenes of the wharfs and boats, but this is a luminous painting with very strong and bright whites, blues and greens and very vigorous brushwork.

A fine companion for Twachtman's "Two Children in a Sailboat" is Lot 71, "Moonlit Seascape," by Childe Hassam (1859-1935), a 30-by-25-inch oil on canvas, dated 1905.

"Childe Hassam's Moonlit Seascape is a remarkably bold rendition of the expansive ocean surrounding Appledore, in the Isle of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire, A combination of Impressionist painting techniques and a modern composition, Moonlit Seascape is a study in refinement and nuance," the catalogue states. This work has an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $666,000.

Lot 9, "Poppies, Appledore," is a terrific oil on canvas, 24 1/4 by 20 1/4 inches, by Hassam, who experimented with many different impressionist styles during his career. While a more conventional subject, this is one of his finest works because of its free and fluid brushwork, unusual asymmetrical and very dramatic composition and vivid color. It has a conservative estimate of $800,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $886,0000.

Lot 26, "Flower Garden at Annisquam," by John Leslie Breck (1860-1899), is another superb impressionist work as it, too, has a very unusual and dramatic composition. Breck's style is much more constrained with Hassam's and not especially distinctive, but his composition here is very strong as is his rhythmic punctuation of different colored flowers. The lot has an estimate of $300,000 to $400,000. It sold for $270,000. "Breck," the catalogue notes, "emerged from Giverny as one of the most influential members of the Boston Impressionist circle. He painted Flower Garden at Annisquam after his return to New England from Europe in 1892. Breck left Giverny for good after the summer of 1891, during which he had become romantically involved with one of Monet's stepdaughters, Blanche Hoschedé. Monet disapproved the union and successfully discouraged it, perhaps promoting Breck's departure for England that all."

Lot 75, "Shinnecock Landscape," by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), is a 10 1/2-by-16-inch oil on panel and one of his better paintings of this Long Island scenery because of its rather strong horizontal composition in which the water divides the picture. It has a somewhat ambitious estimate of $300,000 to $500,000 because of its relatively small size and the lack of figures, but otherwise is a good example of his Impressionistic style. It sold for $446,000. While his Long Island landscapes have been very popular in the art market for the past few decades, his nudes are excellent. Lot 78, "A Study in Curves," is a 22-by-40 1/8-inch oil on canvas that would have made any Western saloon proud. A very beautiful painting, it is not, however, his finest nude but nonetheless quite stunning. His finest nude came up at auction several years ago and showed a similar nude seated in a chair facing the viewer and he also did some magnificent nudes in small pastels. This lot has an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. It failed to sell and passed at $140,000. "A Study in Curves is both an homage to the art-historical forms of the past, and a transformation of them, brining to the nude a new approach - its directness and seeming informality a challenge to the classical works of the Old Masters. Painted at the height of his career, the work may also be seen as a statement by the artist that he had arrived, and could successfully challenge not only his contemporaries, but also the great masters of earlier generations," the catalogue wrote, adding that several sources suggest that the painting may have been exhibited in Paris.

The Terra Foundation for the Arts has consigned several works to this auction including a magnificent work by Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938), who was one of the best Boston Impressionists. Like Twachtman, Tarbell's oeuvre is a bit uneven. He occasionally produced some extraordinary pictures of women in black hats that shaded their faces, some pleasant but not too exciting interiors and a few masterworks of classic Impressionism, best personified by a pretty woman dressed in white in a bucolic setting, such as Lot 28. This 28 1/4-by-24 1/4-inch oil on canvas is entitled, "My Wife, Emeline, in a Garden," and it has a conservative estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. It sold for $534,000. The brushwork in this painting is extremely free and his wife appears to be walking towards the viewer with her eyes on the ground. Although there are some brushstrokes that appear either unnecessary or mistakes, the overall spontaneity of the painting is remarkable. What is particularly striking is the treatment of the lower part of her dress where the artist has used very pale green and blue-gray color to indicate that this part of her dress is in shadow. While idyllic and graceful, the vigorous brushwork in some instances is so slap-dash that it conjures "action" painting. It is tempting to think that this is only a preparatory work, so sensationally dramatic in its sketchiness, yet it is signed, an indication that the artist was pleased with it.

Another work in the auction is equally exciting in its sketchiness, but not its subject matter - Lot 51, "A Country Road in Winter," by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). This 25 1/4-by-30-inch oil on canvas was painted in 1886 in the village of Broadway in the Cotswolds and consigned by the Ettlinger Family Collection and has a very modest estimate of $300,000 to $400,000 as it is one of the artist's finest and most impressionistic landscapes. It sold for $413,000.

While Sargent was best known for his formal portraits, (an example of which is Lot 82, a delightful portrait of a young boy that is estimated at $600,000 to $900,000, which sold for $1,051,000), his watercolors are, on the whole, extraordinary, especially his Venetian scenes. Lot 52, "Near Versailles," is a 13 3/4-by-9 1/2 inch watercolor, is quite unusually stylistically for Sargent for its palette and its composition that really has too central points of focus: firstly the very bold rendering of large and lush trees with blue-green washes of leaves and strong black strokes for shadows; and secondly for the standing figure of a woman with an intensely blue skirt standing by the edge of a path near some figures seated on grass in the foreground. The picture is startling for those familiar with the great park scene painting by John Constable in The Frick Collection which also has a somewhat similar composition and palette, although different style. This is an outstanding watercolor and has a conservative estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It sold for $226,000.

A larger and more controlled Sargent watercolor is Lot 15, "Lady in the Alps Reading (The Cashmere Shawl), which measures 20 1/2 by 15 inches. The work actually shows two women, one in white, who occupies most of the composition, and another in blue, apparently leaning against a tree. The work is a lovely example of the artist's superb artistry in watercolors and it is particularly unusual in his very free and bold treatment of tree trunks at the top of the composition. The face of the woman in white is finely detailed within the framework of her very flamboyant white bonnet. Sargent's bravura brushwork is very much in evidence in the treatment of her dress, but he resorts to very graceful treatment of her hand holding a book and the face of the other woman in shadow. The lot has a conservative estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. It sold for $391,000.

The auction has two major works by Mary Cassatt depicting two very similar looking women, albeit of different generations, in blue dresses, one in oil and one in pastel. The former, Lot 12, depicts Katherine Kelso Cassatt, and measures 39 1/2 by 26 1/8 inches and has a rather ambitious estimate of $3,000,000 to $5,000,000. It sold for $2,976,000. The latter, Lot 18, depicts Mrs. Alexander J. Cassatt in a Blue Evening Gown Seated at a Tapestry Frame, and measures 32 1/4 by 25 4/4 inches and has an estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. It was passed at $850,000. The pastel is beautifully drawn and the oil is a very lovely finished work with some superb brushwork, but the sitter has a rather sad expression despite her exquisite gown.

Richard E. Miller (1875-1943) was a leader of the Giverny Group of American artists who spent time near Monet's home in France in the early years of the 20th Century and his works are consistently lustrous and lush depictions of beautiful women in comfortable interiors. Lot 32, "String Artist," is a good example of his style. The 34 1/4-by-36 1/8-inch oil on canvas has an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. It sold for $501,000.

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1859-1924) is best known for his marvelous and very colorful watercolors that have a simple and soft abstraction and usually a great sense of gaiety. Lot 4, "Salem Harbor No. 2," is a 15 3/4-by-21 3/4-inch watercolor, pastel and pencil on paper that is a good example of Prendergast's art. The work was executed, according to the catalogue between 1920 and 1923 and has an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It sold for $402,000.

There are several nice works by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Thomas Moran (1837-1926) in the auction.

Lot 89, "A Sioux Camp Near Laramie Peak," is a 13 1/4-by-19 1/4-inch oil on paper laid down on board. Executed by Bierstadt in 1959, the lot has an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000 and is a fine study of some Indians by their teepees. It sold for $891,000.

Lot 107, "Waterfall, Minnehana Falls, Minnesota," a 21 1/2-by-29 7/8-inch oil on paper, is a pleasant and rather intimate sketch for another painting of the same scene in the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va. It has an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. It was passed at $75,000.

Lot 104, "A Grizzly Bear," is a delightful small oil on paper sketch that is very appealing for the dramatic depiction of the prowling bear in the foreground with some tall trees and a snow-capped mountain range in the background. The 10 3/8-by-14 1/8-inch work has a conservative estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. It sold for $116,000.

While none of these Bierstadts manifests his fabulous grandiloquence, two lots by Thomas Moran are more typical of how these artists awed the nation with the magnificent spectacular of the natural grandeur of the American West. Lot 106, "Grand Canyon, Colorado River," is a 20-by-16-inch oil on canvas that is dated 1915 and an excellent example of Moran's marvelous technique. It is dramatic, impressive and very painterly despite its relatively small size. Moran produced a great many similar scenes, but this is a very nice example and has an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. It sold for $1,051,000.

Lot 108, "The Southern Arm of the Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Territory," is a 10 1/2-by-14 7/8-inch watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on paperboard and dated 1874. Moran's Yellowstone watercolors have long been prized for their remarkable technique and intense colors. While not in pristine condition, this is one of his more dramatic compositions of this period with a huge rainbow as the central focus and this is one of 15 Moran watercolors of Yellowstone that Louis Prang of Boston reproduced as chromolithographs in 1876. This lot has an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $556,000.

The auction has some good Hudson River School works including a very luminous river scene by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), Lot 44, a 16 1/8-by-30-inch oil on canvas that has an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, and sold for $149,000, and a nice and unusual composition with a richer palette than normal by David Johnson (1827-1908), Lot 34, "Study at Ramapo, New York," a 13 5/8-by-21 5/8-inch oil on canvas that has an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 and sold for $49,350.

Lot 36, "Sun Breaking Through The Clouds (A Wreck on the Shore)," is a very fine marine by Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904). The 12 1/2-by-10 1/2-inch oil on canvas has an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. It sold for $259,000.

Two other highlights of the auction are a still life by Joseph Decker (1853-1924) and an abstract work by Stuart Davis (1894-1964).

There have not been many works by Decker to appear on the market in recent decades and most are still lifes that are extremely painterly.

The Davis, Lot 135, "Memo Number Two," is a very strong example of the artist's style. The 24-by-32-inch oil on canvas was executed in 1956 and has an estimate of $1,200,000 to $1,800,000. It failed to sell. "Upon his first trip to Paris in 1928," the catalogue notes, "Davis was struck and inspired by the modern works of Van Gogh, Matisse, Mondrian, and the Cubists that he encountered in galleries and exhibitions there. Unlike his fellow expatriates, however, Davis significantly reworked formal elements taken from Picasso, Braque and Léger, blending their influences with his own unique subject matter to create his own distinctly American Modernist style."

The auction also has two very impressive, large landscapes by Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945), Lots 110 and 123, that are significantly better and more interesting than the many book illustrations for which he is so famous. Lot 110, "Chadds Ford Hills," has an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000 and Lot 123, "Port Clyde, Maine," oil on canvas, 48 1/8 by 52 1/8 inches has an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. Lot 110 sold for $633,000 and Lot 123 sold for $358,000.

The sale was quite successful with 80 percent of the lots selling for a total of $28,180,000.