Robert Henri, “Jessica Penn in Black with White Plumes,” 1908, Crystal Bridges Museum
I recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal about how art auction houses report results in a way that make their sales appear more successful than they really are.
But thanks to a tip from a reporter in Arkansas, Leslie Newell Peacock of the Arkansas Times, I recently came across one way in which a house reported results in a way that made a sale seem LESS successful:
A Robert Henri (above) that was top lot at an American art sale at Christie’s on May 19, 2005, is not, at this writing, included in that auction’s online price list. Setting an auction record for the artist, it was purchased by Alice Walton‘s planned Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville,
AR. (The painting is reproduced here on its website.)
To see Christie’s online price list for the sale, which may have been amended by the time you read this, go here,
search for May 2005, scroll to May 19, click on “Important American
Paintings.” Then sort by “Price realized (high to low) and see if
the Henri is on top, as it should be. When I looked this morning (see below), top lot was a painting by Julius LeBlanc Stewart, selling for $2.31 million.
How could this omission have happened? The only reason I know for an auction house’s not including a lot on its list of sale results is if that object failed to sell. The Henri sold spectacularly—$3.6 million, including buyer’s premium, against a hammer-price estimate of $1-1.5 million.
Since (as you may have noticed) CultureGrrl is naturally suspicious, I wondered if some list-editing could have been done as a favor to a highly important client. Regarded by some as playing a major role in inflating prices for American art, Walton could be understandably averse to having the amount of her outlays made public. Her museum has very selectively disclosed acquisitions on its website, recenty adding a Sargent and a Benton.
But according to Christie’s. Erin McAndrew, who handles the public relations for the firm’s American art sales, it was an innocent mistake. She told me:
We checked. The Henri omission is an oversight, nothing more. We will work with our online media team to rectify it. I’m not aware of any other instances [of failure to list sold lots].
Chris Crosman, chief curator at Crystal Bridges (but not there at the time of the Henri purchase), told me he had heard that the omission was a “technical glitch.” After checking with the museum’s executive director, Bob Workman, Crosman added:
No one at Crystal Bridges has ever requested that any work
purchased at auction be left off their online (or any other) post-auction price
lists.
Peacock’s story is expected to run tomorrow (online later today), so we’ll see what she makes of all this. She graciously gave me the go-ahead to run my post ahead of her piece. I’ll update here with the link to the Arkansas Times, when it’s up. UPDATE: Peacock’s story is now here (second item).
Meanwhile, here’s what the top of that online price list still looked like when I checked this morning. Peacock had contacted Christie’s on this some days ago:
