Thursday's Top Lots: 19th & 20th Century Literature

Thursday's 19th & 20th Century Literature sale boasted a ninety percent sell-through rate, with highlights across all genres. The two top lots were courtesy of Modernist masters James Joyce and Elizabeth Bishop. One of the “Giant Joyce” limited edition copies of Ulysses sold for $15,600, while a copy of Poems North & South, with an original drawing and jacket design by Bishop, brought $7,800. 

Elizabeth Bishop, Poems North & South – A Cold Spring, first edition, inscribed, Boston, 1955.    

A first edition of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening sold for $4,320, establishing an auction record in the process. 

Kate Chopin, The Awakening, first edition, Chicago & New York, 1899.

Works from the 19^th Century were well represented, with strong showings by several extra-illustrated Charles Dickens novels. Many fine examples of works featuring notable English graphic humorists were met with enthusiasm, including a first edition, 3 volume set of The English Dance of Death and the Dance of Life with illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson. The set brought $3,360, nearly triple the high estimate.

Thomas Rowlandson, The English Dance of Death with The Dance of Life, first editions, London, 1814-17.    

Last Week's Top Lots: American Art / Contemporary Art

Thursday's two-part sale resulted in the highest total ever for Swann's semi-annual auction of American Art / Contemporary Art. The top lot overall, from the Contemporary portion of the sale, was Andy Warhol's Grapes (Special Edition), a unique screenprint with diamond dust. The print set a record, selling for $64,800.

Andy Warhol, Grapes (Special Edition), unique color screenprint with diamond dust, 1979.

Harland Miller's edgy Incurable Romantic Seeks Dirty Filthy Whore ranked second among the Contemporary Art. The 2007 painting brought $52,800. Another painting by the artist, Too Cool To Die, 2004, sold for $26,400.

Harland Miller, Incurable Romantic Seeks Dirty Filthy Whore, oil on canvas, 2007.

The top lot among the American Art was Milton Avery's Sun Worshiper, a gouache painting on paper, circa 1932. It sold for $21,600. Another similar Avery painting, Seated Man, brought $18,000.

Milton Avery, Sun Worshiper, gouache on paper, circa 1932.

A bronze sculpture by Jared French, Standing Male Nude, brought $18,000 and set a record for sculpture by French sold at auction. It was among ten works by the artist offered in the American Art session.

Jared French, Standing Male Nude, bronze sculpture.

Top Lots: Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Historical Prints, Ephemera

The results of last Thursday's sale of Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Historical Prints & Ephemera indicate that strong prices have returned to the maps and graphics markets. Overall, prices realized for maps of American interest were especially robust, and the top lot, Carta particolare della nuoua Belgia è parte della nuoua Anglia, the first printed sea chart of New England, brought a record $31,200.

Robert Dudley, Carta particolare della nuoua Belgia è parte della nuoua Anglia,
engraved sea chart, Florence, 1647.

A pair of George III-period miniature globes by Nathaniel Lane, one terrestrial and one celestial, sold for $15,600. They were among several globes sold in this sale, all of which ranked in the top ten lots.

Nathaniel Lane, miniature globes, London, early 19th century.

While maps dominated the sale, the top lot among the Natural History & Historical Prints portion of the sale was a lovely set of books. The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden Displayed, by William Curtis and John Sims in 14 volumes, sold for $7,200.

William Curtis & John Sims, The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden Displayed,
1-28 in 14 volumes, London, 1790-1808

For Ellsworth Kelly, Nature Wins

June 5th marked the opening of Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a summer-long show of approximately 80 drawings. With some work from as early as 1948, the impressive scope of the exhibition lies in the fact that it represents a lifetime of Kelly's studies of plants.

Ellsworth Kelly, Grape Leaves II, lithograph, 1973-73.
Sold March 4, 2012 for $10,200.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the prominent abstract painter offered some real insight into his mindset when drawing plants, saying, "It’s the only figurative part of my life. I’ve given up figurative painting. I’m not interested in figurative painting at all. The drawing is like playing the piano or something. It’s my pastime. It’s my connection with nature. And I like that leaves are planar. They’re not thick. They’re like … shapes and I’m attracted to shapes, shape and color, or I call it, form and color."

Ellsworth Kelly, Daffodil, lithograph, 1979-80.
Estimate $4,000 to $6,000. At auction June 14, 2012.

And of course, the artist is never content with his work. He comments, "When I finish, when I compare it to what I looked at, it’s never as good. Nature wins." Nature might win, but Kelly's crisp botanical drawings are a close second.

Ray Bradbury: Time Machine

This post comes from John Larson, Swann's 19th & 20th Century Literature cataloguer.

Yesterday we learned of the passing of writer Ray Bradbury in Los Angeles at the age of 91. His contributions to what we understand as the genre of Science-Fiction cannot be overestimated. For many of us, he was what Sci-Fi lit was.

I first encountered his work while sitting on the carpeted floor of my third grade classroom at Roslyn Road Grammar in Barrington, Illinois. Mr. Nicholas, our side-burned teacher, announced that he would be reading a book to us whose title was unknown to me. Dandelion Wine. Immediately I was enthralled and eagerly anticipated the next afternoon’s installment he promised was to come. This was just the beginning. Enthused, engaged, and positively obsessed with the worlds that Bradbury created, I read stories that arced from suburban Chicago to an ersatz African veldt to a perpetually wet Venus to a deftly arranged zero gravity conversation among drifting and doomed astronauts. I began to see a world that was by turns generous, unnerving and amazing. All this I recollect from what I read decades ago.

In a delightful parallel, Mr. Bradbury began publishing in the mid 1940s at virtually the same time as Swann Galleries began business, and over the ensuing years we’ve had the pleasure to have successfully brought to auction numerous examples of his works. In the past year we’ve sold signed first editions of The Martian Chronicles and The October Country; an inscribed first limited edition copy of Fahrenheit 451 in the famous (fireproof!) asbestos binding was featured in a recent 19^th & 20^th Century Literature Sale.

I avidly read and reread at least a half dozen or so of Bradbury’s books as a boy. To this day, the titles, and the evocative covers (in particular the iconic 50s cigar shaped Sputnik- era rocket depicted mid-launch on the cover of R Is For Rocket and the elaborately tattooed back of the inscrutable narrator of The Illustrated Man, each encountered in original paperback editions), summon fond memories specific to the wonderful tales within.

Dread and hope regarding the future, and a peculiarly appropriate claim to nostalgia, is, for me, Bradbury’s legacy. Fireflies at night, a rocket to Mars, that moment in the wind when the branches say your name, the temperature at which paper ignites…