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NEW YORK—Swann Auction missed the $475,000 low estimate it had tagged to its inaugural “Out of the Blue: Modern Art and Jazz” sale, bringing in only $325,850 on a 71 percent sell-through rate. Norman Lewis’ 1946 Bassist painting was the evening’s top lot, though it only just managed to keep the beat, selling for $48,000, just below its $50–70,000 estimate.
The sale, comprised of works “by significant artists inspired by blues, jazz and improvisation,” according to the auction house was heavy on artists from the Harlem Renaissance, like Romare Bearden, who cut in and grabbed the evening’s second- and third-place lots with his circa 1975 Jazz Musician at Piano and his circa 1980 oil monotype Trumpet Player, which sold for $30,000 and $24,000 respectively. Bearden secured six of the evening’s top 20 lots.
Other works dealt more obliquely with the jazz theme, like Charle Alston’s 1950–55 Untitled (Cityscape Night), a 20-by-24-inch Abstract Expressionist–styled work of New York’s skyline. “The night life was fabulous,” Swann’s catalogue quoted Alston saying. “The place just jumped.” Swann was no doubt hoping for a similarly swinging feeling, though it failed to emerge.
Still, Nigel Freeman, the director of Swann’s African-American Fine Art department, said that he was “very pleased by the enthusiastic response to this new, themed auction.”
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