Art collectors were not surprised that the world-famous cowboy artist Charles M. Russell got his highest sale of the year with an American Indian artwork.
After all, the auction record for Russell holds at $5 million for Piegans, his luminous 1918 painting featuring four Indians on horseback crossing a meadow.
But some had to feel like the art gods were smiling on them when both the study and the final watercolor hit the auction block.
During a celebration marking the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the Charles M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, auctioned off the study in its museum benefit auction on March 22 for a $350,000 bid. On July 26, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Reno, Nevada, put the final watercolor on the auction block, which sold for a $1.7 million bid.
Titled Trail of the Iron Horse, the paintings evoke sympathy for our nation’s Indians. These denizens on horseback have found the tracks for a new horse running through their country, the iron horse. The railroad pushed settlement into the frontier and effectively pushed out the Indians and their way of life.
As of press date, Russell’s painting also earned the year’s highest bid for an Indian artwork. Art collectors and history aficionados paid millions for artistic portrayals of frontier Indians. Shared here are some of the year’s top-selling Indian artworks sold at auction.
Photo Gallery
Charles M. Russell, 1924, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, July 26, 2014; $1.7 million.
Joseph H. Sharp, Altermann, $200,000.
The top Indian lot at the Russell benefit auction on March 22 was N.C. Wyeth’s 1905 painting, And They Did Their Trading from the Top of Battlemented Walls; $475,000.
Howard Terpning, Scottsdale Art Auction, $550,000.
Sotheby’s New York: Comanche painted hide shield and two covers, $340,000
Andy Thomas, March in Montana, $55,000.
Scottsdale Art Auction set an artist record for Martin Grelle when his 2006 painting Dust in the Distance hammered down for $500,000.
Frederic Remington,Christie’s New York, $300,000.
Alfred Jacob Miller, John Mix Stanley, Karl Bodmer and George Catlin were the first artists to travel and document Indian Country, providing eyewitness views before the invention of the camera. Miller’s Indian Shooting a Cougar sold at Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Art Auction for a $500,000 bid.
Howard Terpning, 1989, Jackson Hole Art Auction, September 13, 2014, $1.3 million.
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction set an artist record for James Earle Fraser when his 1918 bronze The End of the Trail sold for an $800,000 bid.
Ken Laager, Auction in Santa Fe, (artist record), $16,000.
Frederic Remington, 1907, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, $1.5 million.
Sold at The Russell, March 22, 2014, $350,000.
Henry Farny, Cowan’s Auctions, $310,000.
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