Heritage Auctions' Illustration art in Beverly Hills? Ready, set, Go!

May 3, 2010
Posted by Noah

Before I get into today's post - and letting you know that Coin Monday with JDB will be Coin Tuesday this week - I implore you to take a look at these gorgeous images of the set-up this Thursday's (May 6) Illustration Art Auction in our Beverly Hills Office.

So many amazing paintings, and me so far away here in Dallas. I don't mind telling you that I wish I was there...

Done? Good. Now that you've had a little taste of what awaits you in Beverly Hills - and if you are in L.A., and you can get to our showroom at 3478 West. Olympic Boulevard in the next couple of days, then I do indeed implore you to go check it out! - I want those of you who tuned in for John Dale's regular Coin Monday post to read on today and to check back tomorrow for JDB's weekly insight into the mind of the coin cataloger...




This Thursday's Illustration Art auction, which I wrote about here a week or two ago, is indeed going to be stellar, and is our first bit of Martignette to happen outside the elegant confines of our Slocum Street Annex here in Dallas.

I feel a little like a parent separated from their child for the first time when their kid heads to Summer Camp - okay, so I tend to personalize things a bit too much. That's a good thing, right? - so closely have I followed Martignette, and so much do I love this art.

The good thing is, though, with this art there is very little worry in my heart. Unlike with my own kid (and so it must be with most parents) I don't worry that no one will take as good a care of the artwork as I would. In fact, I would daresay - and pray - that those good Heritage folks overseeing the auction in Beverly Hills would take ten times the care that I could. For that, I am grateful.





Check out the Illustration Art catalog online, mark your favorites, and check back with Heritage Live! on Thursday, starting around 1 p.m. Central, to see where these paintings end up. The prices up until this point have been nothing short of spectacular. There seems to be no reason to believe it will slow.

We're at about the halfway point of Martignette, give or take a few hundred paintings, and as everyone thought when this amazing journey started, the world of Illustration Art collecting will never be the same again.

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Elvgren's 'Bear Facts,' Martignette's favorite, on the block in about two weeks at Heritage Beverly Hills

April 21, 2010

Posted by Noah

The smile on the bear says it all...

Gil Elvgren's essential , magnificent 1962 pin-up, Bear Facts (A Modest Look; Bearback Rider), is going to find a new home in about two weeks when it occupies the centerpiece position of the May 7 Pin-Up & Glamour Art Auction taking place at Heritage Auctions Beverly Hills. It is estimated (quite conservatively, in my humble opinion) at $50,000-$75,000. It's already at $65,000, and we have a ways to go. 'Nuff said.

Perhaps of equal importance to the awesomeness of the piece itself is its enduring fame and its place in Charles Martignette's personal pantheon of Elvgren masterworks. In fact, Bear Facts was Martignette's favorite Elvgren of all. Period. It appeared as the dust jacket cover, and figure 414 of Martignette and Lou Meisel's book Gil Elvgren All His Glamorous American Pin-Ups and also as Figure 82 of The Great American Pin-up, again by the same pair.

I'll sum it up again: The single greatest Illustration Art Collector of all time, Charles Martignette, who assembled the single greatest collection of Illustration Art ever assembled, had a single favorite painting by Gil Elvgren, himself the greatest pin-up artist to ever live, and it was the one you see here, offered for the first time at public auction on May 7.

This painting is going to go big, obviously, and only the very most advanced collectors are going to be vying for this, though every single collector of the form, at every level, is going to be watching and wishing. If I had half a chance I'd buy it myself. I don't, however, have even a quarter of a chance, or an eighth. Or a sixteenth... I would, however, be more than willing to mow your lawn for a year if you buy this for me...

The truth is that, like every Illustration Art Auction here at Heritage in the last year that has featured Martignette's amazing (did I say amazing? I meant AMAZING!) collection, there is much to love and classics of the form all over the sale. There are many that I love, and many I would love to own, none of which I will be able to afford for a long time - but I will someday, and on that day the world will be mine!

Do yourself a favor and take a look through the Illustration Art catalog. Linger a little longer over the Elvgrens, the Vargas, the Armstrongs and the Morans, among the many. Choose one for yourself, one for your best friend, and one for your favorite regular Heritage Blogger whose initials are not JDB (Whoever that may be...).

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Martignette, Illustration Art - Led by Willcox-Smith, Elvgren, Leyendecker and Vargas - continues its inexorable climb to legend at Heritage Auctions

Feb. 19, 2010

Posted by Noah

Perhaps a few of you tuned in to Heritage Live! yesterday to watch how Heritage's Illustration Art auction was going to do... Perhaps you even thought that, with the third segment of Charles Martignette's amazing estate filtering out that prices were going to settle and excitement was going to diminish... If that's the case, then you are disappointed this morning, no?

Let's see. I was at Heritage Slocum location for a good part of the auction in the afternoon, and had it on live on my computer back at my desk, and kept it on at home both before and after dinner until the thing ended somewhere around 9 or 10 p.m. I watched until my eyes blurred and ached, until I couldn't freeze the amazing images out of my consciousness and they seared the background of everything I looked at, ghosting in greens and yellows behind the skaters and skiers of Olympic coverage long after the final tally was set.

That tally? Oh yes, the reason you're disappointed if you're a naysayer (Do you say nay?), is that when the smoke settled, the auction had realized $4.5 million, obliterating the previous single auction record set last year at Heritage by more than $1 million. Serious scratch if ever there was.

While I could talk about the $310,000 Jessie Willcox-Smith drawing, or any of the $100,000+ Elvgrens, or the record setting Vargas Girl ($107,000+), or any number of record-setting illustrations, I will leave that up to the intrepid collector and pop culture junkie to dig through the archives - there is a certain Zen to spending hours doing it.

No. I want to talk about the one painting in this auction that I wanted above any, and that was Rudy Nappi's "Reefer Girl." And once you stop giggling at the quaint title and look at this painting you will see why I - and many more - wanted her for our own.

Reefer Girl was estimated at $2,000-$4,000, and given that none of his paintings had ever brought more than $4950, it seemed reasonable to expect the same range - he's that sort of artist. Quite good, indeed... But Reefer Girl, oh, Reefer Girl... I guess I knew it was destined, like the best of love affairs and liaisons, to end in heartbreak. Yes, my $2,000-$4,000 girl, who I actually entertained a brief second of hope of actually getting my hands on - don't ask how laughable my only bid was, how I would have possibly paid for it and explained it to my wife had I won it, or how quickly said bid tumbled to those with more do-re-mi - soared to $26,290.

Yes, I have good taste. Expensive, too...

I'm sorry for keeping this from you for so long, but love like this cannot be trumpeted too loudly, less it be lost or stolen, and I feared one of this blog's readers would try and take her from me. As it turns out, there was nothing to lose, for my sweet Reefer Girl was never really mine...

Excuse me, please.... No, those aren't tears... It's the smoke, the smoke left from a painted girl with an orange sweater, that's gotten in my eyes...

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Feelin' Leyendecker: Ready for Illustration Art in February at Heritage?

Jan. 21, 2010

Posted by Noah

I knew when I woke up on Monday morning that something felt different for me, and I don't mean the change in the Dallas weather for the warmer - though that's been pretty nice. 70 degrees this week, anyone? Anyone?

I soon pinpointed what it was: We're a month away from February Illustration Art, that's Feb. 18, to be exact, and the third section of Martignette. Hoo boy!

Now, I'm not going to make the mistake this time and tell anyone what my most absolute favorite painting is, because I have expensive taste and want to have just a teeny tiny wheeny whiney little chance of getting something I want out of this auction - though the truth is that I probably won't because, like I said, I've got some good and expensive tastes.

That said, and putting aside my love of the Pin-Ups and Pulps here, I have to tip my hat to J.C.Leyendecker's absolutely sublimely astounding Bringing in the Turkey (Thanksgiving cover), Saturday Evening Post cover, December 2, 1933.

You can see by the picture above, and by clicking on it and going to the lot, that this thing is an absolutely masterpiece of form and color. And it's not going to come cheap, either, estimated as it is at $100,000-$150,000. Needless to say, I am not going to be placing a bid. In fact, I can hear the money gods laughing their derision at the very thought of it....

There is something wildly evocative and instantly familiar about Leyendecker's scene, even though I'd venture a guess that most of us have never had a butler serve us Thanksgiving - at least I haven't - and most of us probably don't have three hound dogs chasing that non-existent butler into the dining room. I have actually served Thanksgiving dinner to people before, and I've even cut a turkey. Can you believe it?

But I digress.

As usual, this auction offers up just a tremendous amount of superb stuff. And there is actually one painting I will at least make a try for, but I refuse to tell you... After all, it was probably you who bought the one I wanted last time, and there's no way I'm going to go through that again...

See you Feb. 18, hopefully along with a few more world record prices.

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Martignette, baby, Martignette: Part II today at Heritage

Oct. 27, 2009

Posted by Noah

As you may have sussed if you've read this blog more than once - Mom? Are you there? - I've got kind of a thing for Illustration Art. My life is nothing like Charles Martignette's life, and I am nothing like Martignette, I promise, but I understand the man on the level that - if I could - I would gladly devote my every waking hour to pursuing the very best examples of illustration and locking them away in a couple of remote warehouses that I would only access under cover of dark.

Okay, maybe a bit too dramatic, but today is the day, after all, that the second part of Martignette's epic, astonishing collection hits the auction block as part of our October Illustration Auction. And let me tell you, included in this auction is some of the tastiest American Art ever produced. Period. The thing is deep with Elvgren, steeped in Vargas and dripping with Leyendecker, Bolles, Moran, Avati, Flagg, Lovell and so many more...

What will today bear out? The first auction, in July of this year, was a stunner, with Martignette pulling down more than $3 million alone, with some amazing prices paid deep into the auction. There were many paintings in that auction that I really wanted but never had a shot at, really, because they were all going for multiples of their estimates. The sale had Heritage Auctions all over the news, with a great write-up in the New York Times and an AP story that spread across the globe. The excitement in the room, especially for the Elvgrens, was palpable.

There is not so much hype around this auction, but the word is certainly out, and you can bet that there will be people bidding, and bidding hard, for the best examples. The hardcore collectors are already vying for the top pieces, and there is no shortage of people who came in because of the PR from the first one and, like me, got hooked. The only difference is that in most cases, I presume, they can buy. I can't, yet, but I can certainly dream...

I can tell you this, too, that there are a couple paintings - two in particular - from the first auction that, if they ever come back on the market, will not escape me. Which ones, you ask?

Not telling, I say.

The painting above, Earl Moran's unabashed masterpiece Golden Hours, is my favorite in this auction. And trust me, there are about 100 more competing right next to it, but this one famous image from the 1940s is a magnificent study of form and color. Moran was known for his use of bold background colors, but if you look at the painting to the left of this graph, Evening Glow, which is another truly gorgeous portrait, you can see that Moran was, simply, a master of light. Move past the fact that he painted women, if it bothers you - he was a journeyman painter, he needed to feed his family, and it was good work.

It must also be said that I have exceedingly good taste, as the bid for Golden Hours is already at $31,000+ with buyer's premium, and - as I see it - will go even higher. Don't be surprised if it reaches $50,000 or more.

We're lucky to live in an age when we can look back, see all these paintings in context of their time, and value them as works of art. See them in person, not just in print, and you will be amazed how quickly they transform from cheesecake or kitsch to bonafide painting. The skill of the artists is undeniable.

I'll be watching closely this afternoon as this auction goes off, for sure. Martignette's provenance is one that will never lose its import; this series of auctions is the seminal event so far in the evolution of the collecting of Illustration Art. Enjoy it now. There are only about 3,300 pieces left...

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Martignette in Times Square: Heritage Auctions' illustration art takes Manhattan

Oct. 14, 2009

Posted by Noah

Yes, the picture is real!

I can't help but think that not only would Gil Elvgren have been thrilled to see his painting - Something's Bothering You (What's Wrong?) - 25 feet tall and towering over Manhattan's times Square under the banner: "Masterpieces of Pin-up at Heritage Auctions."

The painting, one of the Elvgrens from the Charles Martignette Estate coming up for auction on Oct. 27 - just under two weeks - as part of the fall Illustration Art sale, featuring the second part of Martignette's epic collection, is one of many unabashed masterpieces of the form in the auction. If part one was any indication, the price paid for this painting, and all the Elvgrens, will far exceed the $40,000+ estimate. Maybe tack on $100,000 and you'll be close.

This picture came about as part of a press push we're doing, and it was picked up and put on the Reuters board in Times Square, and on the Reuters Board in Las Vegas. I'm sure the borough of Manhattan was duly impressed. If a picture like that won't stop New Yorkers then nothing will.

To leave a comment click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

The Time for Martignette is now! Elvgren, Vargas, Leyendecker and Rockwell ready for the block

July 14, 2009

Posted by Noah

Try as I might, I just can't make myself sick of The Charles Martignette Estate. I've written about the incredible 4300 piece collection, and been back and forth to our Slocum Street location a few miles from Heritage HQ here on Maple Avenue in Dallas, and I simply have not tired of seeing these incredible canvases. The first auction from the collection - a mere smidge of the total at around 400 pieces - will go on the block tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. Dallas time. The auction floor, literal and virtual, should be packed, and the bidding should be intense. Most of these pieces have never been offered on the open market before and I, for one, expect a free-for-all.

Have I mentioned how much I love this stuff? And to further sweeten the pot -as if it could be any sweeter than seeing Elvgrens, Vargas, Rockwells, Leyendeckers, Cornwells, Bolles and Morans up close and personal - and as a compliment to the coverage the collection and tomorrow's auction have already gotten in the antiques, art and auction press, the Associated Press Dallas's Jamie Stengle wrote an excellent article currently making its way to thousands of outlets around the world. It's a good piece that explores Martignette's "quirkiness" as she put it, but also his simply amazing collection.

Here's a link to the article, and a taste of what she wrote: "Charles Martignette's love of illustration art had largely gone unseen, an incredible collection tucked away in storage rooms and a sprawling warehouse before his death. But as auctioneers prepare for an expected $20 million sale, thousands of pieces of art — from scantily clad pinup girls to wholesome works by Norman Rockwell — will come out of the dust.

"Martignette's roughly 4,300 pieces of art will be up for bidding during a series of auctions at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas beginning Wednesday, just more than a year after he died at age 57. Auctions will continue over the next two years with some pieces expected to draw tens of thousands of dollars each.

"He was at the very forefront of collecting this type of material. He was very quirky, very eccentric, but he was also very clever. What he ended up with was the very best examples," said Edward Jaster, Heritage's vice president.

Thanks Jamie!

If you still haven't had a chance to see the art yet, I do heartily recommend that you follow this link to the auction and spend some time familiarizing yourself with the work; you'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future, and the value will only rise. There will never be another collection like this, or a provenance as unimpeachable.

I mean, think about it: The collection is worth $20 million. Can you even begin to imagine how many pieces of art that is? Or how much space it took to store it?... It's mind-boggling to say the least, and a lot of fun to hear from the folks here at Heritage who were among those who waded in to his warehouses after his death. The boxes and such were, literally, piled to the ceiling, packed like sardines. Not even Martignette knew anymore what exactly was in there. He may be dead now, but his legacy will be lasting and important.

Last but not least, as we wait for the auction tomorrow, I want to say goodbye to the painting above here, James Avati's masterpiece for the cover of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye Berlin, the book that became the musical and the movie Cabaret. It is the one piece, above every single one, that I covet the most and would do anything for. Had I an extra $10K or so sitting around, or if my longed-for suitcase of money shows up, then there would be no contest for it. The bidding is already above $6,000, so I'm obviously not the only one to recognize the genius of this painting and thus, alas, it will not be so, unless a sympathetic blog reader decides I am worth getting such a gift. And I am...I am...

I love this painting for a lot of reasons, none of which I have room to write about here. Suffice it to say, she's beautiful and looks like a cool lady and a ton of fun. Had I a time machine, I would go back to 1950s Berlin and find her, and make her mine, which I have about as much chance of doing as I do of being able to buy this painting tomorrow. A bloger can dream, though, can't he?

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

In Nast We…Trust? A hidden gem in the July 15 Illustration Art Auction

July 7, 2009
Posted by John Dale

Across the wide expanse of American history, there are many newsmakers (and many more behind-the-scenes toilers!) who have influenced its course, but only a relative handful –a few hundred, no more than a thousand – that have become so celebrated that they land in the pages of the average eighth-grade history textbook. Most of these names fall into well-defined classes: the pioneer, the president, the symbol of the times.

A few idiosyncratic folks, however, forge their own paths; the name that stuck out to me most as I sat in Mrs. Schwering’s class was Thomas Nast, the caricaturist popularly known as the creator of the modern political cartoon (Let’s not forget he also gave us the modern image of Santa Claus! – Noah).

In that sense Nast, too, was a pioneer; while he certainly was not the first political cartoonist (if you disagree, Benjamin Franklin’s JOIN, OR DIE snake and Gilbert Stuart’s Gerrymander would like to have a word with you), he was notable for his long-range campaigning and consistency, using his cartoons in Harper’s Weekly to hammer repeatedly at foes.

His most famous target was “Boss” Tweed, the infamously corrupt leader of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine and himself a symbol of the Gilded Age. Tweed’s displeasure with Nast has grown to legendary proportions, including the (apocryphal?) line about how voters might not be able to read, but they couldn’t help seeing Nast’s “pictures” in the paper – a strange way of putting it since many of Nast’s early cartoons were heavy on text as well as their more famous imagery.

“Boss” Tweed was convicted and died in prison, but Nast was not done crusading. Even after Nast and Harper’s Weekly parted ways – a split that was mutually disastrous – Nast continued to craft his cartoons, which gradually became simpler and more closely resembled the political cartoon as it appears today.

In style if not in content, his cartoon in our July 15 Illustration Art Auction, The Fat and the Lean Issue, could have been created today: the corpulent and coin-headed effigy of the pig iron trust holds a bar of his own manufacture, which weighs down on a pick-toting man (who looks suspiciously like a Rough Rider-era Theodore Roosevelt) already “shouldering” a war tax. In true political cartooning fashion, the only subtlety in this work is the delicately sketched background, with its smokestacks and house-on-the-hill.

Small but powerful, important but surprisingly affordable (with an opening bid of $400), this cartoon represents a slice of journalism history that may be more than a century old but hardly seems dated.

-John Dale

Pin-ups and glamour everywhere: Must be Martignette in the air

June 19, 2009
Posted by Noah

Everywhere I look these days – be it around my desk, in my inbox or in my files – I am seeing scantily clad women. No, I’m not downloading dubious photos at work. In fact, they are actually images of pieces of great American art. For the most part they are from the Charles Martignette Estate, they’re the top of the pin-up art world – and the illustration art world, I might add – and they are readying for their debut at auction in about 3-1/2 weeks. It’s a tough job having to look at gorgeous pieces from Elvgrens, Vargas, Armstrong and Bolles, among the many many many. It’s a tough job, I know, but someone has to take one for the team.

The first selections from The Martignette Collection are going to hit the block on July 15 and 16. This is an exciting thing indeed. First of all because it’s great stuff, and second of all because work of this quality, in this quantity, from this many legendary artists, never comes on the market. Never. That’s big N little e-v-e-r and you get the point. The piece illustrated above is an Earl Moran, and I love it like no other, except for about 100 or so also in the collection. While this one won’t be publicly accessible for a while longer – it’s part of the September Glamour and Pin-Up auction – let this look just be a tease.

I’ve rambled a bit about the vastness of Martignette before, and I could certainly fill a year’s worth of posts talking about individual pieces, but I wanted to look at the pervasiveness of Pin-Up Culture all over our society right now. If you open your eyes and look for it it’s not hard to see, and it hasn’t been hard to see coming, which makes the release of the Martignette Estate all the more important.

Prices on the top examples of Pin-up and Golden Age Illustration (From Elvgren, Petty and Vargas to Rockwell, Leyendecker and Parrish) have been on the rise for quite a while, with good examples commanding appropriate high five and six figure amounts. Somewhere, though, in the last several years the imagery and philosophy of Pin-Up art has entered the mainstream consciousness.

My best guess is about three years ago when AMC debuted its amazingly good drama Mad Men. The fashion, the haircuts and décor are all spot on to the Mid-Century aesthetic; the designers on the show don’t miss a bit. But it’s in the character of the office manager, Joan Hollaway, played skillfully by the sultry Christina Hendricks, that we see the Pin-Up aesthetic in full glory. Ms. Hendricks is a walking pin-up, with the face, the hair and the body to do any great American illustrator proud. Her wardrobe is cribbed directly from any number of paintings, and the giveaway is that the producers thank the Alberto Vargas estate in the credits. If ever the new millennium will see a prime walking, talking example of a Vargas Girl, it’s Christina Hendricks. Check it out, really.

The culture is everywhere, from young girls inhabiting the clothes and ideas in the form of a bonafide subculture to its profusion in print and TV advertising, rock and roll and Hollywood, there is no mistaking this phenomenon.

It’s a beautiful thing no matter how you look at it, whether you choose to look back at the crumbling innocence of the age that originally produced the art or forward to an age when that innocence is replaced with empowerment. Personally, I choose to look to July 15 when the most important private collection of Illustration Art ever offered at public auction comes up for sale and the transformational effect its disbursement is going to have on a society ripe for its message.

Click on the title of this post to leave a comment.

-Noah Fleisher

The Original Varga Girl: Still looking good as she approaches 70

June 3, 2009

Posted by Noah

It may not be entirely appropriate to say that Alberto Vargas saved Esquire in October 1940, when the very first Varga Girl appeared in the magazine's popular gatefold, but within a year the magazine had added 125,000 readers. Look at the picture, do the math, and you'll arrive at the same conclusion. It was Vargas all the way.

Now, a preliminary drawing from the hand of Alberto Vargas, for what would become the very first Varga Girl in the December 1940 issue of Esquire Magazine, is one of the principal highlights of the July 15 Signature® Illustration Art Auction at Heritage. This is the first auction to feature major Illustration Art highlights from The Estate of Charles Martignette, the most important collection of illustration art to ever come to public auction. The drawing is estimated bring between $20,000-$30,000. And she's a real beauty.

Here's a quote from Ed Jaster, our Illustration honcho here at the fort, from the press release I have spent this morning preparing:

“This particular image is not the one that ultimately appeared in the December 1940 issue of Esquire, but it is her very first incarnation,” said Ed Jaster, Director of Illustration Art at Heritage. “From this single drawing Alberto Vargas would become one of the greatest and most famous illustrators of the 20th century. It is extremely finished and exactly rendered, and is as detailed as many of his final artworks, indicating the importance he placed on it.”

In the late 1930s, it was George Petty – his Petty Girls – that dominated the Esquire gatefolds. These popular drawings were the main graphic draw for readers of the time, but that readership – much to the frustration of Esquire’s publisher – was mostly static. The magazine soon devised a double gatefold to showcase Petty’s buxom babes, and to boost Esquire’s lethargic circulation numbers.

Petty wanted more money, sat out the whole of 1940, and the magazine began the thorny task of finding a replacement for its most popular illustrator. The search proved fruitless for the first half of the year, but on a warm June day their prayers were answered: 44-year-old Alberto Vargas, looking for work, walked into Esquire’s Manhattan headquarters and asked if they might be interested in his services. The rest is history.

This is just a single example of the truly great art that Charles Martignette assembled in his life, just a single example among all the great one that are in this collection.

I know I am easily excitable when it comes to all the amazing stuff Heritage has around, but I can't re-iterate enough just how amazing this whole collection is, across the board pretty much. If you have some time, take a little while and look through the paintings that make this auction.

You can thank me later.

Click on the title of this post to leave a comment.

-Noah Fleisher

One amazing ‘Spill’: an indisputable masterpiece by William Herbert “Buck” Dunton comes this July

April 24, 2009
Posted by Noah

Just look at that painting. Unbelievable movement, seamless blending of colors and a moment of impossible kinetic energy expertly captured. If the cowboy in “The Spill” – arguably the greatest work of art by one W.H. Dunton, as good and important an American illustrator as there’s ever been – survives this spectacular calamity, then it’s surely not going to be a pleasant recovery and certainly not ever a complete one. This painting, acquired as part of The Charles Martignette Estate – written about in this blog a few weeks ago – is going to highlight, in a big way, the July auction of Western and Texas art here at Heritage. I personally can’t wait just to go and stand in front of the thing.

What I love about this painting is myriad. I mentioned a few things above, but there’s so much more to read into it. Why exactly are the cowboy and his horse flipping end over end? Is he a greenhorn rider trying to ride a spirited horse? A Horse Whisperer whose luck has run out? Maybe he got drunk at the saloon in town and was careless going home, or maybe he’s running for his life from Indians or brigands. Whatever the case, when that horse comes over on him, unless he manages to extricate his legs in quick fashion, his back is going to be snapped like a twig. What will his poor Ma and Pa think when their little boy, from a good home on the East Coast who had all the best schooling and abandoned it all to pursue his dream of being a real cowboy, dies alone in the American desert with only rattlesnakes and scorpions as witnesses?

Dunton was more than an illustrator. At the risk of offending any art snobs out there, I’d go as far as to say that he was one of America’s great 20th Century painters. The fact that he made his name initially as an illustrator – and a very good one at that – during America’s Golden Age of Illustration in the early 20th Century did not stop his progress as an artist or his desire to paint authentic subject matter. This is more than evidenced by his bold move in 1914 to Taos, New Mexico. Think about it: He had a successful career drawing for the top magazines of the day, plenty of money to support his family, but he chucked it all to move out West and start painting native landscapes. As a result he lived in near-poverty for the remainder of his days and became a truly transcendent painter. He was a founding member of the famed Taos Society of Art, saw his paintings exhibited all over the nation and garnered wide acclaim – if not fortune – for his important work. Still, though, in his own words, he would have rather lived in a time where no means of “making a living” was necessary at all:

"There is one thing positive, had I lived in Merriweather Lewis's, Audubon's or even as late as Catlin or Francis Parkman's day, no life of mine would be thrown away painting pictures, when I could live the greater part of a year alone with my rifle and a few pack animals among the host of buffalo – the antelope, the great bands of elk…"

Fortunately for us, Dunton did paint, and he did leave behind a sizable body of work, foremost among which is “The Spill.” It’s classic American art at its best, relaying a scene of the great, rustic American West that was a direct slice of life, though certainly – ultimately – much larger.

This painting, rightly so, should command a couple hundred thousand dollars. Lord knows that it will bring much more than that 100 years from now. Personally, I wish I could afford it, and am glad I’m not the subject matter. Wiping out on a horse is bad enough – I was thrown by a horse and then bitten by it when I was a kid learning to ride, no kidding – let alone getting snapped like a pencil by its amazingly articulated and artfully presented full body weight.

Here’s a link to the entire Western and Texas art auction. Check out the Olin Travis in particular for a tasty modern perspective on Texas landscape painting. Once you start staring at this thing it’s hard to stop.

To post comments, click on the headline above and enter comments after the post.

Rockwells and Elvgrens and Vargas, oh my! The Martignette Collection has arrived

April 3, 2009
Posted by Noah

The Charles Martignette Collection of American Illustration Art has arrived at Heritage – as of last week, I believe – and I still don’t necessarily know how to write about it. Never one to let not knowing what was going to happen stop me from rushing in at full tilt, I’ve decided to charge ahead blindly and see if I can make some sense of this gargantuan, stellar collection. For once, though, no one could accuse me of torturing syntax or over-hyperbolizing when I saw that this is easily the most important collection of illustration art to ever come on the market.

This collection hits me in the gut. It is as important as a survey of American art over the past century-plus as it is as a timeline of prevailing attitudes, ideas and sociological constructions over the same course of time. It moves from the formal (Howard Pyle and Brandywine) to the idealistic (Rockwell) to the controversial and profane (Elvgren and Vargas), and absolutely everywhere in between. To try to sum up the depth and breadth of Charles Martignette’s passion, as embodied by this collection, is ridiculous. He invented the field, period.

Martignette fell in love with pin-up art in the early 1970s and made a concerted effort to track down as many of the original illustrations as he could from the artists themselves, their surviving spouses or their families. In a lot of cases he got canvases for a song that are now worth well into the six figure range. His love of illustration art quickly spread from glamor paintings to encompass all periods of American illustration. He became the foremost expert in the field, wrote books on the subject and was a driving force behind what is now a legitimate niche in the field of fine art. I defy most anyone to look at the best examples in this collection and tell me they don’t satisfy all codified and subjective criteria to exist as bonafide “Art.”

What Martignette was really known for, however, was the pin-up, and you can’t talk about pin-ups without mentioning the names of the greats like Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas, both of whom have established track records of greatness at Heritage. Both also had, shall we say, a certain fondness for the female form. It’s this very fact that will make the collection and its subsequent auctioning so attractive to many and so divisive to others. Vargas exhibited his “appreciation” a little more freely than Elvgren. Elvgren exposed his subjects just enough to be titillating but not enough to kill a sense of mystery and – dare I say it? – innocence.

When we sent out a press release a week ago on this collection I got a good handful of responses back from people – inside and out of the company – that took issue with the use of an Elvgren in promoting the acquisition, the same one you can see up top here. Nobody was threatening mayhem or protests, they simply wanted me to understand that they would have appreciated a less overt display from the collection, like one of the pieces we used further down in the press release, like the one you see next to this graph, an amazing J.C. Leyendecker Saturday Evening Post cover from the 1940s. I am not so benighted that I couldn’t appreciate those concerns. Nor am I going to say that the forms that Elvgren portrayed aren’t some of the finest representations I’ve ever looked at – both from an aesthetic and visceral viewpoint. That’s a politic way of saying I think some a’ them girls are real purty…

Here’s the thing: Martignette was known for his pin-up art, and for his wide appreciation of how the genre evolved. Did he like to look at beautiful women in states of semi-undress? Okay, yes. Did he evolve as a collector and refine his palate as his tastes and appreciations grew and changed? Without a doubt. It is in his expansiveness that Martignette made a difference in American art, helping to expand the definition to include a vast array of brilliance across a century that far exceeded whatever boyish lasciviousness may – or may not – have played into the initial spark that awoke the world class collector in him.

The collection, 4300-strong and easily worth in the range of $20 million, will be auctioned off over the course of a year or so here, starting in July, I believe. The job of cataloging the collection has just begun and will take over the better part of an undisclosed location lucky enough to witness its scope. You can bet that I will follow the auctioning of this art closely, especially the marquee lots – here’s a link to the Heritage Press release, which highlights just a touch of them – and you can bet I’ll check back in when they are getting ready to hit the block. It should be a fun year.

It is getting on 6 a.m., my coffee cup is empty, and I have to be getting to work. Have a good weekend.

A close encounter with great children’s art

Feb. 26, 2009
Posted by Noah

Yesterday, at the invitation of David Lisot, our Director of Video, I took a lunchtime stroll up to the executive conference room where he was filming some video lot descriptions for various categories. I walked in right in the middle of filming a few choice specimens from an important California Collection of mostly children’s art from the upcoming Illustration Auction, March 12-13.

On the table were two original drawings from the Madeline series, by Austrian-born Ludwig Bemelmans. Without thinking, I immediately quoted:

“In a little house in Paris, that’s covered in vines, lived 12 little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread, brushed their teeth and went to bed. They left the house at half past nine. The smallest one was Madeline.”

Lisot looked at me like I had uttered some arcane phrase from a long dead language. Todd Hignite, Consignment Director for Illustrations and Comics Art, laughed. He knew exactly what I meant. He has a two-year-old daughter. I have a three-year-old. If you have a well-read toddler girl at home, or had one, then you’ve read the great Madeline series.

I subsequently spent the rest of the day thinking about the vast amount of children’s literature and books that populate our bookshelves (and floors and cabinets and closets and cars) at home, and about those that stand out – those that I break out sparingly at my daughter’s bedtime because I personally love them so much. I have to number Madeline as chief among my current delights, and hers. And there I was yesterday, staring at two perfectly prime examples of Bemelmans’ airy, surreal drawings of Madeline and Pepito – that bad hat!

Three years ago I knew quite little of children’s literature and art, now I get weak in the knees at seeing prime examples of my favorites. Trust me, if I were in a position to bid on these paintings – and any number of others, including original Sendak and Seuss art, very rare! – from this specific collection, I would in a heartbeat; I have my daughter to thank for this appreciation. The process of observing the change in my own perspective, as I’ve come to intimately know much of this great art via hundreds of readings, has been refreshing and, dare I say it, delightful. Let it just be one more thing that I am grateful to her for.

The true greats of Children’s literature – see Sendak (In The Night Kitchen is one of my favorite books ever, of any genre. Period.) and Seuss above – don’t go cheap because they are so rare. Greatness on the level of Bemelmans, and many of the others, is relatively affordable to an average collector. Anywhere from $500 to a few thousand dollars can get you something pretty extraordinary. You just have to know what you like.

“The drawings from the first part of the 20th century, value-wise, are not up there with the big magazine guys of the times,” Todd said. “Some, of course, are very well respected and in museums. The peak period of children’s art, like Dr. Seuss, are extremely rare and expensive because they don’t really exist in private hands. In fact, Seuss and Sendak, two of the biggest, both gave their papers and archives to universities and values are quite high for the rare originals that come up.”

Space is short, as is time, so I’ll spare you the list of my favorite kids books, though I’d be happy to hear yours – just for fun – at NoahF@HA.com.

That’s all there is, there is no more.

The greatness of ‘Brandywine,’ and Jesse Wilcox Smith

Jan. 29, 2009
Posted by Noah

In my years in the Northeast and New England as an antiques, art and architecture writer and editor, I was fortunate to encounter, first hand, the highways, byways and venues that inspired some of the greatest fine art movements that America ever offered. Chief among those two were always the Hudson River Valley School – I lived in its heart, in Rhinebeck, NY – and the Brandywine School of Painting. While I never lived in the Brandywine region of Pennsylvania, I sure traveled there a lot for shows, to interview dealers and artists, and to write about historic sites, including an ill-fated interview with Jamie Wyeth of which the less I say the better. Now I find, years and thousands of miles later, that The Brandywine School has found me here in Dallas, for which I am very grateful.

Brandywine will be amply represented in the March 12-13 Illustration auction here with an original painting by Jesse Willcox Smith – The Then Lover – as well as with a rare painting from Maxfield Parrish, one of Willcox’s contemporaries. Brandywine, as a concept, represents the school of artists that studied with Harold Pyle in Chadd’s Ford, PA at the end of the 19th Century. The illustrations and art to come out of it are unmistakable. The examples in this auction are classic Brandywine, especially the Willcox Smith, and are as good as any painting hanging in any museum in the world.

Willcox Smith was best known for her paintings of “perfect” little girls for a number of major magazines of the day. The Then Lover is a perfect example of one of her angelic girls. What’s always moved me about her paintings of these girls is that while they present a perfect façade, there is always something brewing in their eyes; a far-away look, a winsomeness that bespeaks a greater discontent. You can see where the recently departed Andrew Wyeth got his melancholy from when you look at Willcox Smith’s girls. It’s great stuff.