NEW YORK, NY.- Strong results were realized across all genres, as well as two world auction records for Thomas Hill and Dawson Dawson-Watson were achieved at Bonhams American Art sale in New York on November 19. The top lot of the sale was Theodore Earl Butler’s Flag Day, a significant work by the artist, sold for $552,500.

Flag Day depicts the Fourth Liberty Loan parade in New York City, which was led by President Woodrow Wilson in October 1918, as the end of the war approached. The large-scale composition focuses on the striking flags of the Allies soaring down Fifth Avenue that were interspersed with dazzling red Liberty Loan banners. The spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral are seen in the background, placing the viewpoint at 53rd street and 5th Avenue looking South. In the autumn of 1918, Fifth Avenue was coined the “Avenue of the Allies” due to these spectacular international displays of flags.

Flag Day is part of a tradition of urban flag paintings by both European and American masters, from Claude Monet and Édouard Manet to Childe Hassam and George Luks. There are very few works of this magnitude that Butler painted on this subject. Another example entitled Flags of 1918 features a similar composition and is in the collection of the Birmingham Art Museum (Birmingham, Alabama) and indeed many comparable flag paintings by Butler’s contemporaries are in institutional collections.

This painting will be included in Patrick Bertrand's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Theodore Earl Butler and has been requested for inclusion in an exhibition of the artist’s work, at the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, Ohio) in September 2021.

Further highlights in the sale included:

• Newell Convers Wyeth, Legends of Charlemagne: Cover Illustration, oil on canvas, painted in 1923-24, reproduced as a cover illustration for a 1924 publication of Thomas Bulfinch’s Legends of Charlemagne, sold for $372,500

• Thomas Hill, Hudson River Valley from the Catskill Mountain House, oil on canvas, painted in 1872, a majestic scene in vibrant autumnal colors of the Hudson River Valley, a rare subject for Hill, sold for $372,500, a world auction record for the artist.

• Dawson Dawson-Watson, Harvest Time, oil on canvas, painted circa 1891, a superb representation of Dawson-Watson's skill as an Impressionist painter from his Giverny period, sold for $125,000, a world auction record for the artist.