We will pay for his films, but not necessarily his collection! Hollywood star Mel Gibson’s trove of Maxfield Parrish works at Christie’s last Thursday was rattled by the plunging financial markets and US consumer price index hitting a four year low during the spate of American paintings sales. Christie’s raked in $35,127,500 against a $36m-$56m estimate. While those totals are double the amount fetched a year ago, the percent sold by lot remains mired at the 60% level.
Gibson and his wife Robyn Moore, who are divorcing, chalked up a whopping $2,397,500 loss for Parrish’s oil Daybreak, 1922, two figures in a sugary landscape. The "Braveheart"star and his wife had acquired the picture for $7,632,000 at Christie’s New York on 25 May 2006 and sold it for $5,234,500 to a private phone bidder yesterday. Not selling was one of their 11 Parrish paintings identified in the catalogue as from “a private American collection” as did one other Parrish from another owner.
The former couple auctioned their collection, while their divorce gets wrapped up. Late pop star Michael Jackson was a huge Parrish fan and used the painting Daybreak as inspiration for his You Are Not Alone video clip.
The Art Newspaper reported that the whole Gibson consignment sold for $US10.1 million. It had been expected to attract between $US9.7 million and $US15.6 million. The couple filed for divorce last April before Gibson confirmed his relationship with Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva. He and Grigorieva (shown left) split up five months after she gave birth to their daughter Lucia. Gibson and Moore have been liquidating their assets, including the family home in Malibu, CA.
However, the auction at New York's Christie's auction house saw unusually less biddings.The pair faced a loss of 2 million dollars on their famous Maxfield Parrish "Daybreak". Moore had bought the 1922 oil painting four years ago for 7.6 million dollars. An anonymous buyer has now bought it for 5.2 million dollars.
Another of the Gibson's Parrish paintings, "Sing a Song of Sixpence", was sold below its lowest sales estimate of 300,000 dollars. It fetched 2.2 million dollars. This is a 13-foot-long 1910 mural based on the children's nursery rhyme. The Gibsons acquired the painting in 1995 from the American Illustrators Gallery. it hung in the dining room of their Greenwich, CT estate.
Judy Goffman Cutler who brought Robyn Gibson to Christie’s and co-founded the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island believes too many Parrish pictures were on the block. “In my opinion, Christie’s flooded the market with the Daybreak (shown left) buyer getting the steal of the century,” says Cutler. The Gibson consignment brought $10,991,500 (est $9,789,000-$15,657,000). “For us Daybreak is one of the bigger prices for American painting achieved since the recession began,” says Eric Widing, Christie’s specialist.
In addition to the Gibson haul, Christie’s had scored another major consignment, Manhattan dealer Bernard Goldberg’s inventory (See previous AK File). Although his Edward Steichen oil Moonlit Landscape, 1907, scored $362,500, many of the Goldberg pictures fared less well as they had been shopped around.
Andrew Wyeth’s Off Shore, 1967, jumped to $6,354,500 (est $1.2m-$4.8m). It came from the estate of tastemaker Jane Engelhard and was bought by Frank Fowler, Wyeth’s longtime friend and dealer in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.
At Sotheby’s the day before as the Dow dove 85 points, the audience dwindled and the bid rate climbed. Just like at Christie’s blue chip names like Mary Cassatt and Andrew Wyeth failed to attract attention.
The top scoring painting was a Georgia O’Keeffe flower picture. Her Black Petunia and White Morning Glory I, 1926 went for $4.1m to a private repped by New York dealer Robert Simon who also took her Inside Clam Shell, 1930 for $3.4m for the same client.
Then Texan Roger Horchow with a shopping catalogue, a favorite of the rich is slimming down his holdings. His Marsden Hartley Berlin Series, No. 1, c. 1913, which had belonged to Alfred Stieglitz, went for $1.8m. Records were struck for George Benjamin Luks and George Hitchcock.
“The thinnest part of the market is the middle, pictures priced $50,000-$500,000,” says Betty Krulik, Upper East Side private dealer. She walked off with John Singer Sargent charcoal Portrait of Maria Nelke, 1912 for $98,500. “In pre-Lehman Brothers days,” she says, referring to the bankruptcy of the investment bank, “it would have made $150,000. Now there’s opportunity to buy.”
courtesy: Art Newspaper
(Sing a song of Sixpence, Maxfield Parrish)
