My goal is to publish new posts twice a week — Mondays and Thursdays. However, if you don’t see a new post on Thursday, it’s because I was too busy, so please look for a new one the following Monday. Thursday’s post will be about some very good French cameo glass sales at a recent auction.

Heritage Auctions held a successful auction of Illustration Art in Beverly Hills, CA, on March 1st and 2nd, 2012. Total sales exceeded $3,000,000, with a sell-through rate of 98%.

Top lot of the sale was #78117, an oil on canvas illustration by Gil Elvgren, entitled Vision of Beauty (Unveiling), from 1947. It sold for $140,500, against a pre-sale estimate of $50,000 – $75,000 — almost double the high estimate. Fourteen works by Elvgren were offered, with eleven of them pin-up paintings. Six of those sold for over $50,000, raising the average selling price for Elvgren to $55,915 — far and away the best for any artist in the sale.

The highest price paid for a non-Elvgren painting was $62,500, for a 1937 oil on canvas cover illustration for Spicy Adventure Stories by Hugh Joseph Ward. The selling price was almost double the high estimate of $35,000.

A Body by Fisher/General Motors oil on canvas advertisement by Dean Cornwell, from 1945, entitled On Target- Let’s Finish the Job, did very well. It quadrupled its high estimate of $9,000 to sell for $37,500.

At the other end of the sale, prices started as low as $28 for a portrait of Mrs. Brunner, circa 1950, by Frederick Sands Brunner. In fact, there were 48 items that sold for $100 or less. You could even buy an original work by an important artist like Dean Cornwell, Raleigh Receiving the Charter, for $687.50. Granted it was small — 10½” x 6½”, a pen and watercolor on paper study, and unsigned, but it was still a bargain.

For the complete results of the auction, click on the following link. Heritage Illustration auction results.

Our next show is coming very soon — the Pier Show in New York City on the weekend of March 17th and 18th. You don’t have a lot of time, so plan your trip now. Make it a business/pleasure trip and have a great time in the Big Apple!

In the meantime, we’re still in business, so don’t be bashful. Call or write!
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Look around my website. There are many items for sale, sold items with prices and free lessons about glass and lamps. I regularly add Tiffany vases, lamps and desk accessories, as well as French cameo glass by Galle and Daum Nancy and Louis Icart etchings. Here’s the link. chasenantiques.com