Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: African-American Fine Art

Since we launched our African-American Fine Art department in February 2007, our auctions have consistently set benchmarks for works by important and lesser-known black artists.

Artist-record prices were achieved at Swann Galleries for Hale Woodruff’s 1973 oil on canvas Cinque Exhorts his Captives (above), which sold on February 17, for $156,000, and Elizabeth Catlett’s life-size red cedar sculpture Homage to My Young Black Sisters from 1968 (right), which sold on October 8, for $288,000.

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Prints & Drawings

"The print market is rebounding from the lulls of the past year," said Swann Galleries' Vice President and Director of Prints & Drawings Todd Weyman, after the highest grossing single-owner print sale in Swann’s history, The James B. Parks Collection, on November 9.

The sale’s top lot, the rare Duchamp suitcase, De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rose Selavy (La Boite en Valise), a portfolio with 80 color reproductions and three-dimensional replicas of works by Duchamp, from an edition of 75, 1966 (above), realized $150,000.

Old Master Prints auction highlights included Rembrandt van Rijn's Christ Healing the Sick (The Hundred Guilder Print), etching, engraving and drypoint, circa 1643-49 (above), which sold on November 5, for $43,200.

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Posters

Several world-record prices were set at Swann's Posters auctions this year. We offered rare and beautiful vintage, Modernist, travel, and Art Nouveau images, some of which were previously unrecorded.

An outstanding circa 1910 poster by Montague Birrel Black for the White Star Line, which includes depictions of the Olympic and Titanic ships at sea (right), sold on November 18, for $36,000—more than any other poster by the artist.

Sun Valley / Union Pacific by Dwight Clark Shepler (above), not seen at auction during the last 20 years, sold on February 5, for a record $26,400.

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Photographs

Swann's Photographs auctions in 2009 featured a range of diverse materials, several of which set auction records in this transitional economic climate. Rare 19th-century photographically illustrated albums, such as Francis Bedford's Photographic Pictures Made by Mr. Francis Bedford During the Tour in the East, suite of three albums, London, 1862, performed strongly. This album by Bedford (left) sold on February 19, for a record $132,000.



A rare vintage print of Ansel Adams’s image of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, from 1948, signed and inscribed by Adams (above), which sold on December 8, for $360,000, also shows the growing market for scarce American prints and icons of classical photography.

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Maps

Swann's Maps & Atlases auctions in 2009 attracted scholars, historians, and cartographers, as well as interior decorators and others seeking attractive decorative images.

Of the diverse materials offered, Claudius Ptolamaeus's Geographia Universalis, 47 (of 48) double-page maps, Basel, circa 1542 (above), sold on June 11, for $12,000, and Thomas Jefferys's The Natural and Civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America, with 18 folding maps, London, 1760 (below), sold on December 3, for $16,800.

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Books

Our Books department handled many special, limited-edition works in 2009. Among the record setting items were The Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British North America, bound with an Edinburgh Bible, Boston, circa 1669-82, which sold on September 17 for $57,600 (left), and Marc Chagall’s Bible, two volumes with 105 exquisite etchings hors texte, one of 275 signed sets, Paris, 1956, which sold on November 10 for $108,000 (right).

Swann 2009 Auction Highlights: Autographs

Swann Galleries offered a varied selection of presidential items this year in our Autographs sales. Top-selling lots included an Autograph Letter Signed by General Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant, written near the end of the Civil War, proposing a man-for-man exchange of prisoners of war, which sold on April 23, for $57,600 (left), and a Partly-printed Document Signed by George Washington, as Commander-in-Chief, awarding badges of merit, June 11, 1783, which sold on October 29, for $11,400 (right).

Malvin Gray Johnson Painting in Swann African-American Fine Art Auction February

Malvin Gray Johnson's Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,
oil on canvas, 1928-29. Estimate: $200,000-250,000

Swann Galleries’ auction of African-American Fine Art on February 23, 2010, will offer approximately 160 lots from many notable collections and estates, including several museum-quality works.

The sale’s top lot, estimated between $200,000 and $250,000, is an early masterpiece of American painting, and one the of most celebrated African-American paintings of the first half of the 20th century. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by Malvin Gray Johnson, oil on canvas, 1928-29 (above), is both the artist's best known painting and his first painting to come to auction. Largely due to his sudden death at the age of 38, Johnson’s paintings are extremely scarce–there are only 60 known works. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was the first painting by an African-American to receive both public and critical acclaim in the United States when it won the Harmon Foundation prize for painting in 1929. It was recently rediscovered and shown in the artist’s first retrospective at North Carolina Central University Museum in Durham, NC in 2002 and at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003.

Yale Library's Purchase of Film at Swann in NYTimes

New York Times Antiques columnist Eve Kahn mentioned Swann Galleries' sale of film footage by the Rev. Solomon Sir Jones, a Baptist minister in Oklahoma, which sold for $57,600 in her recap of 2009 auctions.

"[Jones] filmed African-American towns in the 1920s while traveling to preach, focusing on prosperous business owners and eager students. Canisters with about six hours of his footage, which turned up in a Tulsa antiques dealer’s basement, sold for $57,600 on Feb. 26 at Swann Galleries in New York. (The estimate was $40,000 to $60,000.) The buyer, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, is now creating a searchable index for the hundreds of brief scenes labeled with town and family names, and determining how to stabilize the celluloid."

Records Set at Rare & Important Art Nouveau Posters Auction

Swann's auction of Rare & Important Art Nouveau Posters realized five world-record prices yesterday as collectors competed for a host of beautiful graphic images. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the high prices on the Courrier Français versions of Jules Chéret posters, among them, Palais de Glace, Paris, March 1, 1896 (left), which sold for a record $5,760.

Aperture Foundation Photobook Collecting Workshop

On December 1st Swann hosted a group from SNAP! The Aperture Foundation Young Patrons Program, and Daile Kaplan, Director of our Photography Department, gave a talk on collecting photographic literature. Click here to see a brief video of the event.

Art Nouveau Preview Opens Saturday

Visit Swann on Saturday and take in the lovely Art Nouveau Posters preview from 10 AM to 4 PM. Dazzling images by Jules Cheret, Alphonse Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Evelyn Rumsey Cary, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen and many others will be on display. The auction takes place on Wednesday, December 16 at 1:30 PM.

Yesterday's Top Lots: Two Prints of Adams's 'Moonrise'

Two different versions of Ansel Adams’s iconic image of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, sold for competitive prices yesterday at Swann Galleries' auction of Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs. A rare vintage print from 1948, signed and inscribed by Adams, brought $360,000, and a 1960s print realized $48,000 (including buyer's premium).

Last Day to Preview Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs in Tomorrow's Auction

Be sure to stop by Swann Galleries today to preview materials to be offered in tomorrow's two-part auction of Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs.

The sale features many rare and museum-worthy works, including a vintage print of Ansel Adams’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

See you tomorrow at 10:30 AM, or 2:30 PM, or both!

Kazuo Kenmochi's Narcotic Photographic Document, first edition, Tokyo, 1963. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000.

Cigar Labels Catch Fire

Among the top lots in yesterday's auction of Maps & Atlases, Books with Plates, Historical Prints & Ephemera was a large collection of printer's proofs of cigar labels from the early 20th century.

The archive from the American Lithographic Co. consisted of more than 500 folders, each containing successive proofs for a given label. Most were for inner labels on boxes, but there were also some for outer and side labels, as well as a few bands.

The lot sold for a whopping $15,600 (including buyer's premium).

The Photobook and Conceptual Art

Sol LeWitt, Autobiography, illustrated with more than 1,000 reproductions of LeWitt's sequential photographs of his apartment and possessions, first edition, New York, 1980. Estimate $1,500 to $2,500.

Conceptual Art first emerged with Marcel Duchamp’s readymades in the 1910s, but multimedia artist Edward Kienholz actually coined the term in the 1950s. Subsequently, Sol LeWitt’s influential essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” which appeared in Artforum magazine in 1967, described the physicality of the artwork as secondary. “When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand, and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”

Typically, conceptual works may include photographs, image-text composites, or found images. Pictures appear banal in order to focus on the ideas they convey. Moreover, figures associated with the Conceptual Art movement did not consider themselves photographers—a distinction that exists to this day. Rather, they employed photography as a mode of documentation appreciated for its immediacy.

The rise of the Conceptual Art movement parallels the interest in seeing photography accepted as fine art. It should be noted that, in the 1960s, there was resistance to the idea that photography was an authentic medium of creative expression, and both the high-art establishment and the general public were in agreement that photography was too mechanical to be an acceptable creative pursuit. But books conceived and designed by photographers flourished.

Lee Friedlander, Photographs, 1957-1984, illustrated with reproductions of Friedlander's photographs including a special section on cherry blossom season, first japanese edition, Tokyo, 1987. Estimate $800 to $1,200.

Fine-art photographers such as Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander shared with the conceptualists an interest in subverting the conventions of photographic representation. Both were prolific book artists. Early on, Friedlander, like Ed Ruscha, self-published his books. Soon after, photographers Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld pushed the boundaries by shooting images in color.

Edward Ruscha's Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, illustrated with reproductions of photographs by Art Alanis of aerial views of parking lots, first edition, Los Angeles, 1967. Estimate $2,200 to $2,800.

Today, the photobook market features titles by artists and photographers who, during the 1960s-80s, expanded the visual vocabulary associated with Conceptual Art and challenged conventions associated with classical photography. Swann Galleries acknowledges the grand tradition of the photobook in our bi-annual sale of Photographic Literature, Tuesday, December 8th at 10:30 am.

Register to Bid in Swann's Maps & Atlases Auction

Remember to register to bid in Swann Galleries' auction tomorrow of Maps & Atlases, Books with Plates, Historical Prints, Travel Books & Ephemera. The sale will begin at 1:30 pm and will offer maps and atlases from the 16th through the early 20th centuries, the Abramson Family Collection of Holy Land maps, and a small selection of printed ephemera. We'll be previewing these items till 6 pm today, and between 10 am and Noon tomorrow before the auction. We look forward to seeing you soon.



Anthony Finley, A New General Atlas, Philadelphia, 1836.
Estimate $3,000 to $4,000.

Ansel Adams's 'Moonrise' at Auction Next Week

Ansel Adams’s position in the pantheon of master photographers is assured by his magisterial studies of the American landscape. Swann is pleased to offer Moonrise Over Hernandez in two iterations—a vintage and a 1960s print—in our December 8th Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs sale.


The beautiful print offered as lot 350, in which Adams rendered the clouds and sky subtly, in a range of gray tones, was created in 1948. It is believed that fewer than 10 photographs with this delicate tonal quality were produced, three of which are now in museum collections.

The photograph is mounted, signed and inscribed to Valentino Sarra, a photographer and WPA poster designer, who was a friend of Adams. Sarra apparently ordered the picture after seeing it in Camera Annual.


The subject matter of the picture, a cemetery with white crosses that seem to be lit from within, is richly symbolic. A serene and waxing moon, the presumed source of the glowing light, appears in the background.

There has been debate surrounding the actual day on which Adams took this photograph. The picture was actually shot on October 31, 1941, Halloween day, at 4:05 PM, the late afternoon. Interestingly, Adams could not recall when he actually made the photograph, claiming it was sometime between 1941-44. A scientist at the High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado, determined the date and time based on the moon's position in the sky.

The story associated with the picture is the stuff of legend. After a discouraging day in the field with his son and an assistant, Adams was driving home, when he "saw an extraordinary situation--an inevitable photograph! I almost ditched the car and rushed to set up my 8x10-inch view camera . . . but I could not find my exposure meter! The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of clouds in the west, and shadow would seem to dim the white crosses." Adams had pre-visualized the image, managing to capture the picture before the sun set and light irrevocably shifted.

Adams remarked that it was difficult to craft photographs from the original negative, which is why prints from this period are uncommon. In December 1948, he reprocessed the negative, increasing the density in the foreground. Later prints, from the 1960s-1970s, including lot 366, depict a scene with greater contrast, in which the sky appears dramatically darker.

Outstanding Collections Coming to Auction in 2010

Swann is pleased to announce that we will be offering several fine collections in our Winter/Spring 2010 auction season.

On Thursday, February 11 we will auction The Jerome Shochet Collection of Signed Historical Photographs, containing about 90 fine signed photographs, including George Armstrong Custer's own portrait of officers of the seventh cavalry (shown above).

In early March we will offer The Christopher Bou Collection of Ocean Liner and Aviation Memorabilia, comprising posters, prints, artifacts, shipboard ephemera, 3-D models, and early aviation--including zeppelins.

Also in March will be books from The Al Lowman Collection of Texas and Western Americana Literature.

And, in April Swann will conduct a sale of The Otto Penzler Collection of British Espionage and Thriller Fiction, which features a wonderful collection of Ian Fleming titles.