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ART+AUCTION
October 2005

The seemingly unstoppable Coeur d'Alene Art Auction, which specializes in Western and wildlife art, had its biggest annual sale yet on July 30. It brought in $21.2 million, breaking last year's record by some $3 million. Of the 272 lots, only one lot failed to sell and 60 percent went over their high estimates.

The top lot was Piegans, a 1918 oil by Charles M. Russell depicting four Blackfoot Indians on horseback riding home to their village at sunset with the Montana buttes in the background. At $5.6 million, it set a record for the "cowboy artist." Auctioneer Bob Drummond admits that the estimate of $3 million to $5 million was "a little higher than usual for us," but the consignor, the noted Western art collector William Foxley, insisted on it. His judgment proved astute.

The second-highest price of the day went to another painting of a Blackfoot subject-Utah artist Maynard Dixon's The Storytellers, from 1917. This moody, firelit portrayal of braided braves engaged in "sign talk: inside a tepee sold to a telephone bidder for a record $1.7 million, double its high estimate.

A smaller Russell, the 1907 watercolor Crow Scouts in Winter, sold for $962.000 to the same enthusiast who bought Piegans. New York dealer Michael Frost of J.N. Bartfield Galleries, was bidding on behalf of the anonymous collector. A shootout nearly broke out over this Russell, which zoomed to $850,000 in 30 seconds. "It was the fastest sale of the evening," says Drummond. "It was between two people who knew just where they wanted to be."

Coeur d'Alene's habit of outdoing itself is evidence not just of a very well-run auction operation but also of a market for Western art that is booming as never before.

Article, "Cowboys and Indians," by John Dorfman.