Scottsdale Art Auction presents their 2017 auction on April 6th and 8th, 2017, with online bidding via iCollector.com. There are over 470 Lots in the online catalog available for viewing, absentee bidding, and live bidding. This auction brings together a significant offering of artwork, paintings, bronzes, and collectibles. The first session runs on April 6th and features the Glenna Goodacre Auction with an incredible selection of sculptures, bronzes, and artworks. April 8th has two sessions during the day with a wide selection of art and collectibles for any bidder.
Scottsdale Art Auction holds over 150 records in the field of historic and contemporary Western Art. In 2015, they featured works by masters from Frederic Remington to Howard Terpning, from Charles M. Russell to Martin Grelle, from N. C. Wyeth to Kyle Polzin and set a new world record for a painting by G. Harvey, making history with his magnificent 36 x 48 inch canvas History in the Making ($409,500).
Valued at over a quarter million dollars, the feature piece from Glenna Goodacre comes on April 6th in Lot 57. This is entitled “Puddle Jumpers”, and is a bronze that is 72 inches high and 151 inches wide. The artist describes the inspiration in these words: “I was a young mother in 1969 when I started making sculpture, so naturally I turned to my children for models and inspiration. Now I can’t count how many children sculptures I’ve made. I made a couple of almost-life-size kids in the 1970’s, Pawna in 1983, then a full-size teenager Sweet Sue in 1985, and Tug O’ War with five children in 1987. I was encouraged by their success and wanted to do something more ambitious. In 1989 I was looking for inspiration for a big Fall exhibition at Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe. It was to be a two-person exhibition with my dear friend Wilson Hurley. In a children’s magazine I found a photo of a whole bunch of kids holding hands, running, jumping, but the most intriguing thing and the challenge for me and for the foundry was that many of the kids were airborne. My assistant and manager Dan Anthony had the idea of tying the figures together with invisible stainless steel. Thus Puddle Jumpers was created with some of the first flying bronze children I know of. In the end, the sculpture itself didn’t look anything like the magazine photo. It was wildly popular and it took the foundries a while to catch up to the orders. Puddle Jumpers became almost a trademark for me, and for better or for worse, it started an epidemic across the country of running, jumping, flying kid bronzes”.
In the morning session of April 8th, a truly fine piece is available at Lot 223. This is entitled “Leaving the Cold Country” and is an oil on canvas from G Harvey (b. 1933). This beautiful piece is signed on the loer left, and a signed and titled verso, and is 20 by 24 inches. Pre auction estimates value this from $50000 to $70000 and is a rare find at auction.
An incredible offering is in the second session on April 8th , and presented at Lot 367. This is the oil on canvas “Hell Hound” by William R Leigh (1866 – 1955). A true one of a kind, this is a museum quality piece measuring 28 by 22 inches and signed in the lower left dated 1952. As described in the online catalog: “Defiance was Leigh’s battle cry, and Hell Hound defies just about every law of nature. Gravity, for instance. Both horse and buckeroo seem bent on being airborne, and Leigh engages the moment when animal and man are all but flying and the stirrup and lariat are about to become untethered. In capturing this particular moment, Leigh defies time, insists on stopping it at a blinding shutter speed. Hat and dust hang in suspended animation. As for the laws of equine nature, the attempt to ride this beast at all is a prime example of sheer human hubris. William Robinson Leigh was an unsparing individualist and a famous contrarian. Talent earned him a ticket to Munich, and he spent twelve years at the academy there, perfecting his craft. Back in New York, the struggling young realist painter in a New York that had fallen for Cezanne met Thomas Moran. Moran prodded Leigh to light out and seek the “American” in American art. In 1906 he made a fateful journey to Arizona and New Mexico. Leigh’s eyes opened to the open spaces, ancient peoples, and brash cowboys, and the American West would become his principal subject. Leigh would come to be regarded in the same breath as Remington and Russell”.
The April 6th session begins at 5:30 PM Pacific Time on Thursday April 6th. Saturday April 8th has session one opening at 9:30 AM, then after a short break, the second session opens up at 1PM for live bidding. Absentee bidding is currently open and bidders can join the live bidding on auction day. All pieces are available for viewing on iCollector.com by searching for Scottsdale Art Auction.