NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s autumn auction of American Art will be held in New York on 20 November 2014. The 70 works in the sale will be on public view in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries beginning this Saturday, 15 November.

PROPERTY FROM THE GEORGIA O’KEEFFE MUSEUM
Sotheby’s will offer one of the most iconic works by Georgia O’Keeffe ever to appear at auction. Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (left, est. $10/15 million) is a well- known example of O’Keeffe’s celebrated flower paintings, which in turn stand among the most recognizable images in both art history and popular culture. The painting is one of three works by the American artist that are on offer from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sold to benefit its Acquisitions Fund, alongside On the Old Santa Fe Road, (est. $2/3 million), and Untitled (Skunk Cabbage), (est. $500/750,000).

Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 was owned originally by the artist’s sister Anita O’Keeffe Young, whose estate was sold at Sotheby’s in December 1987. It was subsequently included in two private collections before being donated to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum by The Burnett Foundation in 1996. The work hung in the White House for 6 years at the request of First Lady Laura Bush, and has been featured in nearly every major retrospective on the artist, including those at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

FOUR MODERNIST WORKS FROM AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTION
The November auction features four Modernist works emerging from an important American collection, led by Stanton MacDonald-Wright’s Still-Life Synchromy (est. $1.5/2.5 million) from 1917. The museum-quality work, which epitomizes his fully developed synchromist aesthetic, was most recently exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and has also been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, among others. The collection also includes Max Weber’s The Fisherman (Fisherman, Fish and Sea Gulls) (est. $1/1.5 million), Morton Livingston Schamberg’s Painting VI (Camera Flashlight, Machine Still Life) (est. $600/800,000) and Preston Dickinson’s Still Life No. 1 (est. $600/800,000).

CHILDE HASSAM ON THE NEW ENGLAND COAST
Appearing at auction for the first time, Shingling the First Baptist Church, Gloucester (est. $1/1.5 million) is an important large-scale depiction of one of Childe Hassam’s favorite subjects: the idyllic coastal fishing village of Gloucester, Massachusetts, which the artist returned to throughout his career. Hassam retained the present work in his personal collection throughout his life, and it has remained in the same family collection since 1970. Shingling the First Baptist Church, Gloucester is distinguished further by its beautiful surface and condition, and for having been exhibited a number of times during the artist’s lifetime, including at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the National Academy of Design in New York.

WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE & EMIL CARLSEN: AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS
Two works by the American Impressionists William Merritt Chase and Emil Carlsen are on offer from the same American private collection. Chase’s Tired (est. $1.5/2.5 million) depicts the artist’s daughter Alice at the age of seven or eight. The work’s notable provenance includes the artist’s own collection, and more than a decade as part of the renowned Manoogian Collection of 19th century American art. Carlsen’s Red Carnations and Delft (Red Carnations) from 1875 is an example of one of the artist’s early works, which he produced before gaining widespread recognition as a painter (est. $150/250,000).

NORMAN ROCKWELL: AMERICAN ICON
A strong selection of seven paintings and works on paper by Norman Rockwell are led by his Fireman (est. $1.5/2.5 million), which originally appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on 27 May 1944. The scene contains one of Rockwell’s favorite pictorial devices: the picture-within-a- picture. He especially enjoyed portraying the idea of paintings hanging in museums and galleries coming to life on the walls – this theme provided the type of visual game that Rockwell loved to present.

MORTON KÜNSTLER: THE EYE OF THE ARTIST
The prolific and popular contemporary artist Morton Künstler, best known for his depictions of the Civil War, is also a passionate collector of American illustration art. The American Art sale will offer two works from his personal collection by Joseph Christian Leyendecker: “This is My Busy Day!” (Valentine’s Day Cherub) (est. $50/70,000), and Study for Butterfly Couple (est. $25/35,000). The sale also includes Künstler’s own work The Great Beefsteak Raid: General Wade Hampton, September 16, 1864 (above, est. $25/35,000), which depicts a pivotal and dramatic moment near the end of the American Civil War.