DALLAS, TX.- This fall, Heritage presents another leap forward in its special relationship with classic American art — significant works by the most notable artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The most American of auction houses' connection to this history is built on its dedication to scholarship, connoisseurship, and emphasis on provenance: Heritage understands and loves these works and is proud to share them with collectors who appreciate their place in not only the canon, but in America's conception of itself.

The story of America is still young but has been ever-dynamic, aesthetically and socially innovative, and sensitive to its multiple unfolding histories — and the artwork produced by its sharpest artists reflects a nation in all of its complexity. Heritage's Views and Visions: Important Works by American Masters Signature® Auction on Nov. 17 follows a narrative that paints a picture, so to speak, of the cumulative power of American artists at their best: Their vision, wisdom, humor, and sensuality are on full display in the event. From classic American Hudson River School painters such as Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Robinson Gifford and William Bradford, to the burgeoning inventiveness and honesty of Ashcan School greats such as George Bellows and Ernest Lawson, moving into early and late modernism with artists undergoing radical reassessment such as George Tooker and Jared French, and finding clear voice and American definition via great illustration by such luminaries as Maxfield Parrish, Maurice Sendak and Joseph Leyendecker, this auction is a walk through a fascinating history of a nation's growth, and perhaps even destiny.




"The quality of material showcased in this prestigious event epitomizes the quintessence of value within classic and early-modern American art, a distinguished category that Heritage is immensely honored to handle," says Aviva Lehmann, Heritage's Senior Vice President of American Art. "We are thrilled to present this extraordinary auction to our discerning community of collectors, scholars, and curators who, together with Heritage, champion the critical genre of American Art."

The 90 works in the auction add up to a dazzlingly cohesive and coherent collection that tell a story of a century of American maturation. The earliest works in the event, from the mid-to late 19th century, come from some of the great landscape artists of the Hudson River School and their stunning depictions of a country that was ever-expanding: Albert Bierstadt's Evening, Owens Lake, California, circa 1870s, exemplifies Bierstadt's gift for capturing the raw unadulterated beauty of America's West as well as his desire for land conservation, and his Mountain Lake at Sunset, circa 1882, was painted as a wedding gift to the prominent financier Ogden Mills and his spouse Ruth Livington Mills. They are joined here by paintings by Sandford Robinson Gifford: Long Branch Beach, 1867 (with an exhibition history that includes the Whitney, the National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and The Beach at Cohasset, 1864, which epitomizes the artist's singular mastery of the Luminist landscape. William Bradford's painting Icebound Sealer Under Winter Sun, 1877, emerged from a mid-19th-century fascination with scientific documentation and theories of the sublime, and finds itself alongside key landscape and portrait paintings of the era by William Trost Richards, Birger Sandzén, Frank Weston Benson, Asher Brown Durand and more, not to mention an 1897 bronze study by Augustus Saint-Gaudens titled Hettie Anderson, first study for the Head of Victory — the artist's favorite model's transformation into the U.S. ten- and twenty-dollar gold coins.

Three artists who have in recent years enjoyed substantial and deserved reassessment — George Tooker, Jared French and Paul Cadmus — are considered a triumvirate of a unique American movement: Magic Realism. Informed by canny neoclassical techniques while remaining unequivocally modern, works by each of these men stretched the horizon — of both aesthetic and subject — in surprising ways and have been cited increasingly as inspiration for today's rising-star artists. Two significant and gorgeous Tooker paintings are leading lights in this event, and prove his mastery of portraying evocative psychological images in a dreamlike style using tempera: Tree, from 1965, evokes something of the ambivalence in Tooker's relationship to nature once he'd moved with his partner William Christopher from Manhattan to Vermont; and his Window X, from 1987, is an intimate and cozy work from his Windows series; it was inspired by Tooker's observations of the residents of a rooming house across the street from the Brooklyn Heights brownstone he shared with William. Jared French and Paul Cadmus — onetime lovers, longtime friends and frequent denizens of Fire Island — have works in this auction: Jared French's Painting and Sculpture, from 1949, is emblematic of his deft combination of surrealism and the beauty of the human body; Cadmus' three studies of David and Goliath, circa 1971, are seminal drawings that served as preparation for one of the artist's largest paintings. Cadmus' gritty portraits of private life in urban environments — bold, ironic, and unabashedly homoerotic — were realized in a hand of breathtaking draftsmanship, and these studies prove the full force of Cadmus' gift.

Great American illustration has been one of the most important storytelling devices of this nation's history, and our best illustrators have a have a strong presence here. Original works by Maxfield Parrish are getting hard to come by. Two stunning Parrish works are leaders in this event: An oil and pencil on board for a 1908 cover of Collier's titled School Days (Alphabet), notably graphic and whimsical, was inspired by Parrish's son's earliest attempts to make sense of the alphabet and reading; and an oil and paper on board Winter, from 1906, reflects a scene in upstate New Hampshire in the early 20th century that is eminently human and realistic. N.C. Wyeth's illustration for the cover of Mary Johnston's 1914 book The Witch is in this event: the oil-on-canvas work, titled Good-bye, Mistress Friendly-Soul!, was created in the artist's prime as the country's most prominent illustrator. It is subtle yet emotional, in keeping with the novel's themes and struggling protagonists. Joseph Christian Leyendecker has three works in this auction, including the devastating and prescient Red Cross Letter, which he created as a cover for The Saturday Evening Post in October of 1914 — nearly three years before the United States would enter the Great War. The magnificent Maurice Sendak has a drop-dead charming work here featuring his most beloved monsters (and their boy leader Max) in Let the Wild Rumpus Start!, Where the Wild Things Are, a stage design for the Glyndebourne Touring Opera stage design, circa 1979. Other fantastic illustrators represented with key works here include John Ford Clymer, with his Saturday Evening Post cover from 1960 titled Recess at Pine Creek School, Montana; Amos Sewell with his Saturday Evening Post cover from 1953 titled This Car Needs Washing; and the wonderful Ludwig Bemelmans with his illustration from his beloved series of children's Madeline books, this one from Madeline's Rescue,1953,depicting the high drama of Madeline being pulled from the Seine by the faithful dog Genevieve, who leaps into the river and "drags her safe from a watery grave."