Summer Vacation Landscapes

David Burliuk, Sailing off Montauk, watercolor. Estimate: $1,500 to $2,500.

After an interminably long winter, Memorial Day weekend is almost here. While this year’s winter seemed unusually harsh, and spring’s allergies abnormally potent, the escapist urge presents itself like clockwork every year. And artists, just like the rest of us, take to the beach or the country when the weather gets warm, looking to exchange the hubbub of the city for fresh inspiration in calmer surroundings. Many of the featured artists in the June 9th American Art sale vacationed on the East Coast, bringing along their paints and brushes in addition to their sunblock. 

Mary Nimmo Moran, Long Island Landscape, oil on panel, 1880. Estimate: $10,000 to $15,000.

Mary Nimmo Moran, wife of famed Hudson River School landscape painter Thomas Moran, learned to draw and paint from her husband. By the 1870s, she was exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The Morans relocated to New York from Newark, New Jersey in the early 1880s, and in 1884, completed building a studio-cottage in East Hampton, Long Island. Mary Moran became a proficient etcher and made numerous prints and paintings of Long Island. The Long Island landscape above is her first painting to appear at auction. 

Thomas Hart Benton, Landscape, Martha's Vineyard, oil on paper, circa 1922-24. Estimate: $30,000 to $50,000.

Thomas Hart Benton summered in Martha's Vineyard for much of his adult life, and it was there he began painting in the Regionalist style he's best known for. This landscape of Martha’s Vineyard, circa 1922-24, shows the impact of the setting's natural beauty on the artist. 

Jared French, Siren, egg tempera, circa 1945. Estimate: $70,000 to $100,000.

Jared French, along with Paul Cadmus and Margaret Hoening, was a founding member of the PaJaMa photographic collective; they spent their summers on the remote beaches of New York’s Fire Island. French’s painting Siren exemplifies his use of archetypal symbolism to represent basic aspects of human experience—here, a dockside businessman in a suit oversees the capture of a male nude while a Siren gazes on in dismay. The painting remained in French's own collection until his death and, as a result, was likely never published or exhibited. 

William Zorach, Still Life, Maine, watercolor, 1941. Estimate: $3,000 to $5,000.

Other East Coast views include works by David Burliuk, Walter Granville-Smith, David Levine, Luigi Lucioni and William Zorach. 

Top Lots: Important Photobooks and Photographs

André Kertész, A Hungarian Memory, portfolio with 15 silver prints, 1914-1923; printed 1980. Sold for $48,000.

The top lot in Swann's Important Photobooks and Photographs auction was A Hungarian Memory, André Kertész's portfolio of 15 silver prints of the artist's homeland, which brought $48,000, a record price for the portfolio.

A rare complete series of Alfred Stieglitz's 291, 12 numbers in 9 issues, printed from March 1915 through February 1916 and illustrated with reproductions of art and typographical compositions by Picabia, Picasso, John Marin and others, sold for $31,200.

Dancers, by Roy DeCarava, 1956, printed in 1983, was the day's highest-selling single photograph, bringing $22,800, a record price for a modern print of the photograph.

Pictorial Japan

Kitagawa Utamaro, A Picture Book, An Abundance of New Leaves (Ehon Wakaba Sakae), circa 1794. Estimate: $1,000 to $1,500.

Environmental disasters, both natural and manmade, have defined much of Japan’s last century. With the 24-hour news cycle, the most recent tragedies to beset this island nation are impressed upon our minds, as both professional photographers and anyone with a cell phone camera constantly uploaded images moment by moment during the earthquakes and tsunami. With tragedies of the not so distant past, including World War II and the atomic bombings, the photographs released were a horrific chronicle of tragedy. Yet the release of pictures was slower, and thus, each image more potent than the last. 


Swann's May 19th Important Photobooks and Photographs auction includes several Japan related items, documenting pivotal times in Japanese history, while the June 2nd Maps & Atlases auction features a large selection of Japanese material rarely seen in the U.S.

W. Eugene Smith, Minamata—Tomoko and Her Mother (Japan), silver print, 1972. Estimate: $12,000 to $18,000.

W. Eugene Smith’s Minamata—Tomoko and Her Mother (Japan), captures the raw moment of a mother bathing her disabled daughter who suffered from “Minamata disease.” Between 1932 and 1968, mercury was released into the water (and, by extension, the fish population used for food) by a local factory. By the time Smith and his wife Aileen arrived, thousands were affected. To Smith, whose photographs, essays and articles were specifically crafted to bring attention to this historical event, “Photography is a small voice. I believe in it. If it is well conceived, it sometimes works. That is why I and also Aileen photograph in Minamata.”

Widely touted as one of the most highly-regarded photobooks, Kikuji Kawada’s The Map, was published 20 years to the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1965. Kawada's photographs portray the cultural clash between the East and West—scraps of metal, remnants of fortifications, Coca-Cola ads, TV sets and stains on the ceilings and walls of Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome. While none of the expansive double gatefolds actually depict a map, each serves as a reference, a question, a detail that might  move the viewer towards closure—or at least acceptance—of a Japan firmly entrenched in a new globalism. “We are adrift in an era without courage, ambition, action, or even beautiful memories,” Kawada writes, using both Japanese and English. “Ask! Today, where is our map? Where is our vision and our brilliant order?”  

Suruga Province, pen and ink and watercolor map, Japan, circa 1716-35. Estimate: $100,000 to $150,000.

Early views of Japan, including a map of Suruga Province, circa 1716-35, with details of villages, calligraphic notations on the local economy, and an inspiring depiction of Mt. Fuji, are also included in the June 2nd Maps & Atlases auction. The map served as an economic report to the Shogun, providing details of agricultural and natural resource production to aid in determining taxation of the daimyo—feudal Japanese warlords who served under his rule. 


Middle: Kikuji Kawada, Chizu [The Map], text by Kenzaburo Oe, August 6, 1965. Estimate: $15,000 to $25,000.

The Look of a Benefit Auctioneer

Theatre for a New Audience's Spring Gala on May 2nd at the American Museum of Natural History.

His trademark plaid suits have been compared to everything from a 1970s couch to Santa's jolly outfit. Now, as Swann's President Nicholas Lowry has been making the rounds of recent benefit auctions, he has added a faux bejeweled dollar sign necklace for a dose of bling—and humor—at these charitable affairs. 

Sporting his necklace at the Princeton Symphony Orchestra Fundraising Gala on April 16th with Todd Weyman and Shawna Brickley of Swann's Prints & Drawings department.

Left: Like father like son—Nicho and George Lowry share a love of plaid. Right: Todd Weyman, George and Nicho at the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, New York.

Most recently, Nicho, along with George Lowry, Swann Chairman, and Todd Weyman, Director of Swann's Prints & Drawings department, conducted a live auction at the Garrison Art Center on Saturday, May 14th as part of their bi-annual Artists on Location fundraiser on the banks of the Hudson River.

Nicho will also be the auctioneer at the Madison Square Park Conservancy's The Spring Party on May 18th. The invitation-only fundraiser benefits the Conservancy, which includes cultural programs like the newly installed 44-foot high sculpture, Echo, by Jaume Plensa.

Art for a Friends Walls

When the television show Friends was still on the air, much fuss was made over the interior design of the spaces where the characters spent their time. Young people starting their careers could hardly afford such large apartments, critics sniffed. Fans appreciated the colorful clutter and vintage posters that defined the style of the characters they loved.


More recently, the New York papers and tabloids have been buzzing with news of former Friends star Jennifer Aniston's new $8 million apartment in the city--a bachelorette pad better fitting a movie star than a coffee-house waitress. A close look at the Us Weekly layout above uncovers Bert Stern's iconic Marilyn Monroe (Crucifix), a highlight in Swann's upcoming Important Photobooks and Photographs auction. It will be on view starting tomorrow in Swann's fifth-floor gallery; see other photo.

Yesterday's Top Lots: Art, Press, & Illustrated Books and 19th & 20th Century Literature

Jasper Johns and Samuel Beckett, Foirades / Fizzles, 1976. Sold for $16,800. 

The top lots in yesterday's Art, Press & Illustrated Books and 19th & 20th Century Literature represented each of the categories, indicating a strong selection of material across genres. The day's top lot was a livre d'artiste by Jasper Johns and Samuel Beckett, Foirades / Fizzles, which sold for $16,800. 

Henry David Thoreau, The Writings...Manuscript Edition, 20 volumes, 1906. Sold for $9,000.

A manuscript edition in original bindings of Thoreau's The Writings, signed by the publisher and with an original manuscript sheet from Thoreau's journal brought $9,000. The leaf begins: "However, [in pencil: 'the greater part of'] our most brilliant trees are peculiarly American; and whether they do not attain to equal or considerable brightness when transplanted into England, I do not know..."

The first appearance of Carroll John Daly's The Snarl of the Beast with a true first state dust jacket, 1927, sold for $8,400. The only other known dust jacket lists titles that were printed in 1931. Daly is considered the inventor of the hard-boiled detective genre, and The Snarl and the Beast was his second novel. 

Carroll John Daly, The Snarl of the Beast, 1927. Sold for $8,400.

Robert Scott Duncanson's East Coast Debut

Robert Scott Duncanson, Untitled (Landscape), oil on board, circa 1860-65. Sold on February 27, 2011 for $45,600.

Robert Scott Duncanson was the first African-American landscape painter to achieve international recognition. The son of a biracial tradesman from Virginia, and the grandson of a freed slave, Duncanson apprenticed in his youth to his family's housepainting and carpentry business in Canada. He began his artistic career by copying popular prints. Duncanson moved to Cincinnati in the 1840s, where he was inspired by the Hudson River school and in particular, its founder, Thomas Cole. 

On May 1st, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY opened Robert S. Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedmen's Sons, the first show of Duncanson's work in several years, and the first on the East Coast. Curated by Joseph D. Ketner, the Distinguished Curator-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston and author of The Emergence of the African-American Artist: Robert S. Duncanson 1821-1872, the show includes many new works discovered since his book's publication 15 years ago, including Untitled (Landscape), circa 1860-65, sold at Swann Galleries on February 17, 2011 for $45,600.

As part of the 2011 New York Heritage Weekend, there will be guided tours of the exhibit May 12-15. 

Swann Celebrates: Nigel Freeman & the Beach Street 5

Nigel Freeman, Director of Swann's African-American Fine Art department, is also an accomplished painter and printmaker. Nigel has had solo exhibitions of his paintings in New York, London, Paris and San Antonio, and last Thursday night, he celebrated the opening of his group show—Beach Street 5—in his hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey. The exhibition is on view at GAS Gallery and Studio until June 2nd. 

Swann's Marco Tomaschett, Christine von der Linn, Hillary Brody and Rebecca Weiss came out to support Nigel's opening. 

Have Space Suit — Will Travel

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy consists of Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation.

Swann's May 12 auction of Art, Press & Illustrated Books; and 19th & 20th Century Literature wraps up with a section devoted to science fiction, fantasy and thriller fiction. Most of the first edition titles come from a single collection, amassed by a true fan of mind-bending fiction. Nearly every book comes with its original dust jacket—some of which are quite thrilling. 


As would be expected from any serious science fiction collection, there are important works by the "big three" writers of the genre: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. Specifically, there is a set of Asimov's best known work, The Foundation Trilogy, 1951-53, which won the Hugo Award for all-time best series; Clarke's novelization of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was based in part on his short story "The Sentinel," and Heinlein's Starship Troopers, also a Hugo award winner and the basis for the popular 1997 film. 

Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is the only novel by the author to win a Hugo Award. 

Other award-winning sci-fi books include a bright copy of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, winner of a 1963 Hugo award; a first edition in novel form of Daniel Keyes's famous short story Flowers for Algernon, winner of the 1966 Nubula award; and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, winner of the 1985 Nebula and 1986 Hugo awards.

J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Hobbit launched The Lord of the Rings epic.  

Among the fantasy highlights are a first American edition of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, as well as William Goldman's humorous adventure tale The Princess Bride.


There are also titles by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Stephen King, Clark Ashton Smith, Roger Zelazny and more.

American Art at Swann: Jared French

Swann's June 9 auction of American Art features a Jared French painting titled Siren, egg tempera on gessoed linen over masonite, circa 1945, which descended directly from the artist's estate to the current owner.


In this video, Amelia Foster, one of Swann's Prints & Drawings cataloguers, offers her insights into the rich symbolism of the painting. For more information, check out the catalogue or visit the exhibition, which opens Saturday, June 4.

Reinventing the Photobook as an Art Form

21ST Editions, the art and photography book publisher in South Dennis, Massachusetts, is known for their lavishly produced photobooks made in collaboration with contemporary artists including Sally Mann, Robert and Shana Parkeharrison and Joel-Peter Witkin. All of their titles feature custom-designed bindings, exquisite papers, and beautiful images in formats including platinum prints, cyanotypes, hand-pulled photogravures, pigment ink prints, silver gelatin and more. They are also publishers of the Journal of Contemporary Photography.

Robert and Shana Parkeharrison: Listening to the Earth, 2003 is a highlight
© Robert and Shana Parkeharrison

Swann's May 19 auction of Important Photobooks and Photographs features an exceptional lot of 21ST Editions monographs and portfolios—26 in all—from 1998-2010, offered with a complete run of issues of the Journal. In total, there are 357 bound prints and an additional 159 signed photographs and photogravures by Eikoh Hosoe, Michael Kenna, Sheila Metzner, Vik Muniz, and many others. Each book is in pristine condition and has an original silk, cloth, morocco or goat binding, and several still have their original shipping boxes.

Tom Baril: Manhattan Portfolio, 2004 contains 12 hand-pulled photogravures
© Tom Baril

Please refer to Swann's Photographs Department for more information.

Yesterday's Top Lots: Modernist Posters

Jean Dupas, Bal des Étudiants, 1927. Sold for $36,000.

Jean Dupas's Bal des Étudiants was the highest priced lot in yesterday's Modernist Posters auction. The poster, which sold for $36,000, is the essence of French Art Deco. Dupas is known for his refined renditions of elegant women with elongated necks and baroque costumes, his use of sophisticated layers of shadows, and minimal color.

Edward McKnight Kauffer, Power / The Nerve Centre of London’s Underground, 1931. Sold for $33,600.

Posters for the London Underground continue to attract collectors, and Edward McKnight Kauffer's rare Power / The Nerve Centre of London's Underground brought an auction record price of $33,600. Kauffer designed 141 posters for the London Underground, and this commanding machine-age image is one of his undisputed masterpieces. 

Luciano Achille Mauzan, Casa America / Pianos, 1930. Sold for $16,800.

Prolific poster and postcard designer Luciano Achille Mauzan's image for a Buenos Aires music store, Casa America / Pianos, charmed bidders to the tune of $16,800. It is one of the more than 2000 posters designed by the artist during his career.

A Note from the Book Department: Call Them What You Will

There is a sign tacked to the cork board of the Art & Illustrated Books Department clipped from a forgotten source years ago that states: "What's the difference between artist's books and books made by artists which are not artists' books, and books?" Its edges may be curled with age, and its continued presence exists to amuse the specialists, but its message remains valid because the terminology is a perennial conundrum.


Others regularly attempt to define them in essays, books, articles, and diagrams; some even explaining them by stating what they are NOT (i.e. children's books, "art" books, monographs, or exhibition catalogues). Besides the basic question of what they are called—artist's books, livres d'artiste, even bookworks—there is also the argument of punctuation—artist's books, artists' books, artists books. It can drive a collector or specialist mad, and no consensus seems to ever have been made.

One of the highlights of Swann's May 2009 sale of The Ritter Collection of Modern Illustrated Books and Livres d'Artiste was Edward Hutchins's 1989 work Exhibit A: The Rabbit Report, a paper-mache rabbit containing a screen-printed scroll, which completely eschewed conventions of book publishing.

However, in the most basic sense, an artist's book is a collaborative effort between an author and artist, but can also be created by a single person. These works give us the visual and tactile pleasure of experiencing the book as an artistic object.They are most often in the recognizable form of a physical book with a binding and contents, but again, they can also embody any number of shapes, mediums, or material. For the admirer of books and all forms of artistic expression, they are some of the most beautiful and interesting objects one can collect and they show up in numerous sales at Swann, including the May 12th Art, Press & Illustrated Books auction.

Pablo Picasso and Pierre Reverdy, Le Chant des Morts, 1946-48.

As we saw on April 7th in the Fine Books & Manuscripts auction, with Eric Gill’s 20th century homage to the illuminated manuscript with his Four Gospels, here Picasso intentionally did the same for the somber poems about World War II by poet Pierre Reverdy, filling each page in Le chant des Morts with large red strokes resembling Asian calligraphy. It became the largest number of illustrations Picasso ever produced for any book and sets itself apart from his other, more figurative works by its bold red arabesques of swift brushstrokes.

James Joyce, with artwork by Susan Weil and Marjorie Van Dyke, The Epiphanies, 1987. 

Three books by modern artist book master Vincent FitzGerald & Company represent more contemporary artistic interpretations of literary works. Published in the 1980s, The Epiphanies, Bride-Ship and Gulls, and Giacomo Joyce Interpreted by Susan Weil showcase the creative artist and designer Susan Weil's celebration of the life and works of James Joyce, using stencils, watercolors, gouaches, and three dimensional collages.

Fashion Photography: The Opulent and Intimate

Left: Ormond Gigli, Girls In the Windows, N.Y.C., 1960. Right: Ormond Gigli, Famous Ford Models, 1966.

Fashion photography skirts the boundaries of high art. Many of the most well known photographers are those whose images grace the pages of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and Vanity Fair. Their images not only reach a wide audience, but the budgets allocated to Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts and others are infamous. Those high sums enable the photographers to transport their subjects—most commonly celebrities and supermodels—to exotic locales gleaming with rich flora, haute couture, jewels, and perhaps an elephant or two. It also affords them the means to work on non-commissioned projects, taking with them the new techniques and perspectives from the grander shoots. An array of fashion photography appears in Swann's Important Photobooks and Photographs auction on May 19th.  

Surrounded by the glitz and glamour inherent to the fashion world, photographers become both invisible to their subjects and bystanders to decadence. This unique relationship can create intimate moments between a photographer and his subject, as in the case of a racy photograph by Helmut Newton, By-Product of An Advertising Sitting, which he cheekily noted on the back was "photographed clandestinely during a fashion sitting in Paris." And while Madonna is more known for her outrageous—and revealing—outfits, what is more genuine than her piercing stare beneath her (formerly signature) bushy brows?  



This ostentation that is synonymous with the idea of fashion photography, dating all the way back to Avedon's and Penn's collaborations with Harper's Bazaar and Vogue beginning in the 1940s, is missing in Ormond Gigli's works from the 1960s. He began the decade with his Girls in the Window, N.Y.C., the sale's cover lot. While each model sports a different, brightly colored frock, the demure stylings of the era tone down the opulence, despite the otherwise elegant façade of the building and shiny car below. By 1966, the Ford girls are the embodiment of 1960s Mod, yet within a studio setting are devoid of all the trappings of the photo shoot.

The sale also features hybrid images, where the female form remains the subject, but the glossy magazine excess has been stripped. Patrick Demarchelier, whose suite of 7 artistic studies is a highlight, will forever be known to a generation simply as "Patrick," whose presence on the phone was commanded by Meryl Streep's icy editor in The Devil Wears Prada, the epitome of fashion journalism. The fashion photographer's interplay with editors and subjects makes an indelible imprint—he might cavort with Kate Moss and a pack of lions off the coast of Belize, but there's still a domineering Miranda Priestly to whom he must answer.    


Above left: Patrick Demarchelier, Suite of 7 artistic studies, 6 of women, circa 2000. Above right: Herb Ritts, Waterfall, Woman with Sphere, Hollywood, 1989. Middle top: Herb Ritts, Madonna Eyes, Los Angeles, 1987. Middle bottom: Helmut Newton, By-Product of An Advertising Sitting, 1973.