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October 20, 2017|Swann News|Books

Records & Results: Early Printed Books

Our October 17 auction of Early Printed, Medical, Scientific & Travel Books garnered eager interest from bibliophiles, exceeding the sale’s high estimate and earning more than half a million dollars.…

October 16, 2017 | Books

The First Accounts of Captain Cook’s Fateful Voyage

A transportive highlight in our October 17 auction of Early Printed, Medical, Scientific & Travel Books is the rare complete set of first editions detailing Captain James Cook’s voyages around the…

October 16, 2017 | Photographs & Photobooks

Magnum Photographs: 70th Anniversary

The following post was written by Keavy Handley-Byrne of our Photographs & Photobooks department: Magnum Photos, founded as a cooperative agency in 1947, is perhaps the most well-known photographic collective…

October 11, 2017 | African-American Fine Art

Records & Results: African-American Fine Art

Four works exceeded $100,000 at our sale of African-American Fine Art on Thursday, October 5. A wealth of unique paintings, drawings and monotypes distinguished the sale of approximately 150 lots, nearly…

October 10, 2017 | Photographs & Photobooks

Do You Speak Photography?

This post was written by our Vice President and Director of Photographs & Photobooks, Daile Kaplan. Photography is ubiquitous in visual culture. Whether you prefer contemporary works by Alec…

October 7, 2017 | Printed & Manuscript Americana

Records & Results: Printed & Manuscript Americana

Hoards of history-lovers came out to attend the preview for our auction of Printed & Manuscript Americana on September 28. The sale featured a trove of unique material, much of which…

October 4, 2017 | Prints & Drawings

Records & Results: 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings

We opened our fall season with a marathon sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, breaking multiple records and earning more than $2.6M. The September 19 auction offered…

October 2, 2017 | African-American Fine Art

Four Unique Works by Charles White Debut at Auction

The highlight of our October 5 auction of African-American Fine Art is a series of unique works by Charles White that have never before appeared at auction. We spoke to our…

September 27, 2017 | African-American Fine Art

Alma Thomas’s Journey to Abstraction

Alma Thomas is renowned for her brightly colored abstract works that seem to dance across canvas and paper, but how did she develop that iconic style? Two paintings that reveal…

September 26, 2017 | Printed & Manuscript Americana

Diary of a Syrian-American Woman, 1908

On a trip to her homeland, a young Syrian-American woman named Mary Arbeely kept a diary recording her attempts to connect with her ancestors while feeling deeply homesick. The diary,…

September 25, 2017 | Printed & Manuscript Americana

A Nineteenth-Century Honolulu Gossip Rag

The book arrived in Honolulu by ship from San Francisco on New Year’s Day, 1863, and soon caused a stir throughout the city. It begins by revealing the author’s intent…

September 18, 2017 | African-American Fine Art

John Biggers Mural Damaged by Hurricane Harvey

As Hurricane Harvey roared through Houston last month, an unlikely victim was left behind: the monumental 1953 mural by John Biggers, titled Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education.…

September 12, 2017 | Prints & Drawings

Who is Françoise Gilot?

The top lot in our September 19 auction of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings is a masterful lithograph by Pablo Picasso of his muse, Françoise Gilot. The following…

September 8, 2017 | Prints & Drawings

Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata

Some people made such an impact on history that we see them in multiple sales each season, across widely disparate genres. One such figure was Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who…

August 23, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Specialists in the Field: Sarah Shelburne at Dia: Beacon

One of the best parts of working at Swann is the ability to be surrounded by incredible varieties of art collecting and witness their intersection within our gallery. Our specialists…

August 17, 2017 | Photographs & Photobooks

Black and White All Over: The Riddle of Classical Photography

The following was written by Vice President and Director of Photographs & Photobooks, Daile Kaplan: I love looking at photographs in both black-and-white and color iterations. Long before streaming…

August 11, 2017 | Photographs & Photobooks

Identifying Types of Photographic Prints

Our Photographs & Photobooks department has put together a cheat sheet for identifying some of the more common types of photographs we handle. A cyanotype print is made by…

August 4, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Records & Results: Vintage Posters

More than 600 colorful advertisements and announcements crossed the block at our sale of Vintage Posters on Wednesday, August 2. The encyclopedic selection represented a century’s worth of development in…

August 1, 2017 | African-American Fine Art

Specialists in the Field: Nigel Freeman at the Tate

Nigel Freeman, founder and director of our African-American Fine Art department, is in London this week visiting some familiar images. Two of the works in the Tate Modern’s latest exhibition, Soul of…

July 27, 2017 | Vintage Posters

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Tattoos & Posters

An unusual lot in our upcoming auction of Vintage Posters features a colorful individual: Captain Costentenus, a Greek Albanian man tattooed from head to foot. Captain Costentenus was…

July 19, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Isle Adam: Timeless & Inspiring

Shrewd perusers of our sales may notice a familiar eave lurking in the catalogue for our upcoming auction of Vintage Posters: the iconic orange roof of the beach house at…

July 17, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Abram Games’s Sultry Poster Causes a Stir

Our August 2 auction of Vintage Posters features the largest — and best — selection of war posters we have ever offered. As England prepared to enter World War Two,…

July 14, 2017 | Photographs & Photobooks

Daile Kaplan on The Thrill of Photographic Discovery

With the recent NPR coverage questioning whether an anonymous photograph actually depicts Amelia Earhart on a wharf in Jaluit Atoll, photography’s role as historic evidence is once again in the…

July 13, 2017 | Swann

Specialists in the Field: Summer Reading List

Specialists in the Field is an informal summer segment of the blog in which we speak to specialists at Swann about their extracurricular activities. Unsurprisingly, their interests are generally aligned…

July 10, 2017 | Vintage Posters

American War Posters, 100 Years Later

Our August 2 auction of Vintage Posters will feature an exceptionally wide array of World War I imagery, honoring the centennial anniversary of the U.S.’s entry into the fray. More…

June 30, 2017 | Contemporary Art

Specialists in the Field: The New Museum

Specialists at Swann keep up with the cultural heartbeat by frequenting museum exhibitions. Over the summer, we’ll be sharing some of their experiences, beginning with Diana Flatto and Jessica Feldman…

June 27, 2017 | American Art

Mrs. Stimson Joins Her Husband at the Huntington Historical Society

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lewis Stimson lived in an estate in Huntington, Long Island. In his memoir, he wrote of her, “That marriage has now lasted over fifty-four years, during…

June 19, 2017 | American Art

Records & Results: American Art

We closed our Spring 2017 season with a climactic sale of American Art on Thursday, June 15. The annual auction offered exclusively original or unique works by artists living or…

June 16, 2017 | Swann

Records & Results: Spring 2017

The spring 2017 season at Swann Galleries marked the 75th anniversary of our first auction. On March 27, 1942, Benjamin Swann held an auction dedicated to rare and antiquarian books.…

June 14, 2017 | Books

Records & Results: Art, Press & Illustrated Books

Our June 13 auction of Art, Press & Illustrated Books offered a spectrum of books that doubled as objets d’art, with records for important twentieth-century works celebrating art and typography.…

June 12, 2017 | Maps & Atlases

Records & Results: Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books

Our June 7 auction of Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books saw strong results with multiple auction debuts and records, as well as a plethora of unique…

June 9, 2017 | American Art

Winslow Homer’s Personal “Bible”

On a visit to his Prout’s Neck studio, Winslow Homer’s friend and fellow artist John W. Beatty picked up a dogeared book and asked him if he found it of…

June 9, 2017 | Art Press & Illustrated Books

Grapefruit: Yoko Ono’s Guide to Living Art

Visionary Yoko Ono created “event scores” as a way to encourage people to find art and beauty in their quotidian activities. A signed first edition of her seminal self-published book…

June 7, 2017 | American Art

Recently Rediscovered Watercolor by John Marin

A recently rediscovered watercolor by John Marin will be making its auction debut in our June 15 sale of American Art. The work displays two features for which the artist…

June 5, 2017 | Art Press & Illustrated Books

Nahui Olin: Muse & Maker

Nahui Olin, the pseudonym of Carmen Mondragón, was a Mexican Surrealist active in the 1920s and ’30s. She hailed from the upper echelons of Mexican society, and fraternized with the…

June 1, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Records & Results: Graphic Design

Our May 25 auction of Graphic Design offered a cornucopia of inspired works spanning fin de siècle Art Nouveau masters to modernist posters. The top lot of the sale was Col…

May 30, 2017 | Maps & Atlases

Leaving the Land: Ship’s Logs from England to the Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century

In January of 1819, Captain William Hodgson steered the three-masted merchant ship Transit down the River Avon from Bristol, beginning a six-month voyage toward the Mediterranean. The ship’s log book he meticulously…

May 30, 2017 | Art Press & Illustrated Books

A Personal Collection of Bernhardt Wall Books

Bernhardt Wall was an American illustrator active in the first half of the twentieth century. A selection of fine, early or test examples of his work were given to his…

May 26, 2017 | Maps & Atlases

The Endless Mountains: A Map That Promised More

Specialist Caleb Kiffer of our Maps & Atlases department on one of his favorite pieces in our June 7 auction of Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books: a…

May 23, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Graphic Design in the Vienna Secession

This post includes notes from the catalogue of our May 25 auction of Graphic Design, featuring an extensive selection of works out of the Wiener Werkstätte, the design school for the…

May 18, 2017 | Books

Records & Results: 19th & 20th Century Literature

First editions and inscribed copies filled the shelves at our May 16 auction of 19th & 20th Century Literature. The sale broke several auction records and encompassed a variety of genres,…

May 12, 2017 | Vintage Posters

Psychedelic Concert Posters

This post was written by Sarah Shelburne of the Vintage Posters department using examples from the May 25 auction of Graphic Design. Few art forms have been as…

May 11, 2017 | Books

George & Robert Cruikshank, Early Caricaturists

Brothers George and Isaac (who often went by his middle name of Robert) Cruikshank were famed early nineteenth-century caricaturists. Their work appears in two of our sales this season, 19th…

May 10, 2017 | Contemporary Art

East Hampton Artists

The community of East Hampton has long been known as an avant-garde artist enclave. Our May 11 auction of Contemporary Art features a century’s worth of output by artists who…

May 9, 2017 | Autographs

Records & Results: Autographs

On Thursday, May 4, we held an auction of Autographs, with twentieth-century highlights by authors taking the spotlight. The sale performed well overall, with 88% of items offered finding buyers. …

May 5, 2017 | Contemporary Art

Postwar Innovations in Printmaking

These examples come from our May 11 auction of Contemporary Art. From the initial proliferation of engraving in the fifteenth century to the explosion of lithography in the late 1800s,…

May 4, 2017 | Prints & Drawings

Records & Results: Old Master Through Modern Prints

On Tuesday, May 2, we offered Old Master Through Modern Prints, with highlights from as long ago as 1495 and as recent as 1959. The top lot of the…

May 3, 2017 | Autographs

Thomas Hart Benton Links Pollock and Rubens

In 1926, Thomas Hart Benton was a teacher at the Art Students League of New York. Disappointed by the lack of a painting manual, he set about writing his own.…

May 2, 2017 | Contemporary Art

Notes from the Catalogue: Robert Motherwell’s Early Surrealist Period

Notes from the catalogue of our May 11 auction of Contemporary Art. Though Motherwell is known for his integral role in the New York school of Abstract Expressionism, the…

May 1, 2017 | Autographs

Dearest Marlene: Letters & Photos from the Collection of Marlene Dietrich

Swann is honored to commemorate the legacy of Marlene Dietrich by offering for the first time select items that have touched her life and that of her family. Our May…

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