Displaying items by tag: blackwell's island

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AK will soon debut a recently acquired painting by the American Modernist painter Edward Hopper. The work, titled Blackwell’s Island, was sold at Christie’s in May to a private collector for $19.2 million – the second highest price ever paid for a painting by the artist at auction. The Crystal Bridges Museum later announced that they had acquired the work from the private collection. The painting is slated to go on on view by mid-September in the museum’s Early 20th Century Art Gallery.

Blackwell’s Island depicts what is now known as Roosevelt Island, located off of Manhattan in the East River. The painting, which features a wide expanse of blue sky above swirling water and an industrial skyline, creates a sense of distance between the viewer and the impersonal subject. The composition promotes feelings of loneliness and isolation, which pervade much of Hopper’s work.

Crystal Bridges’ President, Don Bacigalupi, said, “This is a most ambitious composition for Hopper. He painted this work at the height of his powers and it exemplifies some of the best of Hopper’s style: a complex architectural composition with a full range of light and shadow, few people and drama of the past colliding with the present in the form of historic architecture meeting modern.”

While the Crystal Bridges Museum has a number of Hopper’s works on paper in its collection, Blackwell’s Island is its first major oil painting by the artist.

The American art sale, which took place today, May 23, 2013 at Christie’s in New York, realized $50.8 million, the highest total that the category has seen since May 2008. 99 out of the 135 lots offered sold and 85% sold by value.

The auction’s top lot was Edward Hopper’s (1882-1967) oil on canvas painting Blackwell’s Island (1928), which brought $19.1 million (estimate: $15 million-$20 million). Hopper also took the sale’s second top spot with his watercolor on paper Kelly Jenness House (1932), which sold for $4.1 million (estimate: $2 million-$3 million) and set the auction record for a work on paper by the artist. The Hopper sales reinforced the artist’s continued popularity among buyers and the strong market demand for exceptional Modernist works.

A highly anticipated collection of six paintings by the Wyeth family of artists sold for upward of $2 million. The works by N.C. (1882-1945), Andrew (1917-2009), and Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946) were put up for sale by New Jersey-based businessman and avid collector of the Wyeths’ works, Eric Sambol. The highlight of the collection was N.C. Wyeth’s Norry Seavey Hauling Lobster Traps Off Blubber Island (1938), which garnered nearly $844,000.

Other significant sales from the auction included Norman Rockwell’s (1894-1978) Starstruck (1934), which brought over $2 million, exceeding its high estimate of $1.2 million, Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986) My Back Yard (1943), which was purchased by the Cincinnati Art Museum for $1.8 million (estimate: $1 million-$1.5 million), George Bellows’ (1882-1925) Splinter Beach (1913), which achieved $1.2 million (estimate: $500,000-$700,000), and Sanford Robinson Gifford’s (1823-1880) Tappan Zee (1879-80), which sold for $1.1 million (estimate: $200,000-$300,000).