DALLAS, TX.- Henri Martin's majestic landscape, La vallée du vert à Labastide-du-Vert, circa 1920, sold for $485,000 in Heritage Auctions' $1.2 million European Art Signature Auction in Dallas. While most of the Dec. 10 auction's top lot honors went to French Impressionists and Fauves, Russian artist Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky's romantic marine painting, French Ships Departing the Black Sea, 1871, sold for $125,000.

"The Martin, in its superb condition, set the tone for this choice sale," said Ed Beardsley, Vice President and Managing Director of Fine Arts at Heritage. "Martin was a consummate craftsman who never let a bad painting leave his studio, yet even within an oeuvre of such accomplishment there are top pieces, and the museum-quality La vallée is one of these. Throughout the auction, we were excited to see multiple bidders pursue works by early 20th-century European modernists well beyond the estimates," Beardsley added, citing L'Anglaise, circa 1968, by Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, which sold for $81,250 – more than double its pre-auction estimate – following interest from eight bidders.

A luminous Post-Impressionist canvas strongly reminiscent of Paul Signac from a private Texas collection, Reflections of a Setting Sun by Jacques Martin-Ferrières, quickly surpassed its $5,000 estimate to end at $22,500 after a bidding war broke out among 21 different bidders. The same collection offered Louis Valtat's 1909 oil on canvas La Tour en Normandie, which sold for $21,250. A lushly painted Vase de fleurs by the highly independent French landscapist Maxime Maufra, friend of both Gauguin and Sérusier, realized $20,000.

A selection of iconic Parisian streetscapes by Edouard-Léon Cortès included Rue de Lyon, Bastille, which sold for $50,000; Place Saint-Michel closed at $25,000; Place de la Republique brought $22,500; and Avenue de l'Opéra sous la pluie, circa 1950-55, hammered for $17,500.

Bidders also competed for works by noted Danish genre and interior painters including Reading on a Quiet Afternoon by Carl Vilhelm Holsoe, which sold for $20,625, and The Dollies' Outing, 1882, by Axel Theofilus Helsted, which sold for $18,750.