Two Winslow Homer paintings that were recently appraised on Antiques Roadshow have been auctioned by Christie’s during its 19th century American Art and Western Painting sales on January 23.
The watercolor paintings Boy and Girl at a Well (1879) and Boy and Girl on a Swing (1879) were consigned to the auction house and sold after being appraised on the popular PBS program. They were also added to the official catalogue raisonné for the artist after they were reviewed by expert Abigail Booth Gerdts, who wrote the entries for the catalogue.
Boy and Girl at a Well (1879) sold for $113,400, including fees, on an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. Boy and Girl on a Swing (1879) sold for $75,600, also including fees, above an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.
“This is such an exciting consignment because the works had never before been published,” Paige Kestenman, Christie’s Vice President and Senior Specialist of American Art, told ARTnews.
“The owners didn’t really even know what they had,” art advisor and dealer Betty Krulik explained to ARTnews.
According to Krulik—who appraised the paintings for Antiques Roadshow—the owner loved them so much, she made copies of the artworks to hang in her office, before safely storing the originals. A colleague of the present owner identified them as works by Homer, and the archivist applied to Antiques Roadshow for 12 years before finally being selected for an episode filming in Arkansas. There, about six months, ago, Krulik concluded Boy and Girl at a Well and Boy and Girl on a Swing were authentic works that were not in the artist’s existing catalogue raisonné.
Both paintings were likely acquired at auction in late 1879 in Chicago. After the initial purchase by Aucelia Harriett Bentley Burtis from Wm A. Butters and Co., they were passed down five generations to the present owner, an archivist.
Krulik said applicants send in images of items for appraisal and get a ticket, but in-person viewing is necessary to determine if an artwork isn’t a reproduction or an oleograph, a print textured to resemble an oil painting. But Krulik said she was blown away to see them in their original frames and arranged for a review by Booth Gerdts.
“She retired, and she really doesn’t look at works anymore. But we got really lucky,” Krulik said. “We were able to get Abby to look at them, and she added them to the catalog raisonné. The owner’s great, great grandmother, had bought them in Chicago in a certain year—a year that Winslow Homer was exhibiting works at a Chicago gallery, trying to raise money for a trip to Europe. So all the pieces fell together.”
Kestenman said the catalogue included several works from the same series which was painted at Houghton Farm in the late 1870s, with both Boy and Girl at a Well (1879) and Boy and Girl on a Swing (1879) resembling works from this era which celebrate rural innocent life in the wake of the Civil War.
In terms of calculating the estimate, Christie’s took into consideration the fact that the two paintings have been in the same collection for over 100 years, their condition, the quality of the restoration work done, as well as the artist’s reputation.
“Winslow Homer is well established as one of the leading artists of the 19th century and in art history, and he’s so well known, particularly for his skill as a watercolorist, and he has such a long history of being included in both institutional and important private collections,” Kenstenman said. “So he’s a real institution in the American art market, and there’s a very solid ongoing demand for his paintings because of that prominence within art history, both in the market and curatorial only.”
Boy and Girl on a Swing also had a much lower estimate due to its fading from light exposure.
In addition to the two Homer watercolor paintings, the American Sublime and 19th Century American and Western Art sales included new records for Thomas Cole, Homer Dodge Martin, and Arnold Friedberg. The top seven-figure lots were Cole’s landscape, Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, sold for $1.6 million on an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million, and Martin Johnson Heade’s Magnolias on a Shiny Table sold for $1.5 million, well past its an estimate of $700,000 to $1 million.
The total for both the American Sublime and 19th Century American and Western Art sales at Christie’s was $19.2 million, including fees.
