New York -- Covering five centuries and the entire Western Hemisphere, Swann Galleries’ sale of Printed & Manuscript Americana is set to come across the block on September 26. Highlights include archives documenting slavery and abolition, printings of the Declaration of Independence, Civil War diaries, quality Utah and Mormon material, as well as Latin Americana.
New York — Swann Galleries will open their fall 2019 season on Thursday, September 19 with a sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings. Replete with exceptional pieces by European and American visionaries, the auction features work from nineteenth-century harbingers of modernism through the major Modern art movements of the twentieth century.
New York -- Swann Galleries’ summer sale of Vintage Posters on Wednesday, August 7 was a lively event with active bidding across all platforms. “Many of the auction's niche collecting categories saw heated competition for trophy pieces, including sections on propaganda, sports and auto racing, as well as beach and summer resort posters,” noted Nicholas D. Lowry, Vintage Posters Director and house President.
Here are the sales I'll be watching this week:
New York — Swann Galleries is poised to offer a rare look at Herman Melville’s personal library in a timely sale announced on the eve of the author’s bicentennial. Two volumes of Greek & Roman classics owned—and heavily annotated—by Melville are set to come across the block in Fine Books & Manuscripts on October 10.
New York – Vintage Posters are on bright and bold display in a summer sale on Wednesday, August 7 at Swann Galleries. The auction brings to market the house’s most extensive selection of vintage automobile advertisements to date, rare examples of sports posters, along with premier examples of wartime and political propaganda, as well as promotional images for a variety of performing arts.
New York — The Pride Sale at Swann Galleries on Thursday, June 20 offered a curated selection of LGBTQ+ art, photography, literature, autographs and ephemera from the past 200 years, with many first-time appearances on the market. The sale was a resounding success with 75% of the lots finding buyers, bringing a total of $950,833.
New York — Swann Galleries continued the spring 2019 season with a sale of American Art on June 13, which boasted three artist records.
American Modernists were standouts in the sale with two of the three records: Attilio Salemme’s 1945 oil on canvas painting Rivalry, at $21,250, and Nautical Composition with an Anchor, oil on board, by Joseph Lambert Cain, at $11,250. Suzy Frelinghuysen’s Cubist-inspired oil and collage work, Act Three, 1942 reached $40,000, and Esphyr Slobodkina’s Abstract Composition, gouache on board, circa 1940s earned $8,450.
New York – “There was strong bidding across the board and it’s hard not to be pleased with the general outcome of the sale,” said Maps & Atlases Specialist, Caleb Kiffer of Swann Galleries June 6 sale of Maps & Atlases, Natural Science & Color Plate Books which saw an 84% sell-through rate. Highlights included rare cartographic publications by Lewis Evans and Petrus Plancius, as well as color plate books by John Fisk Allen and Willian Sharp.
Another busy week coming up:
