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  William Adolphe Bouguereau, Psyche, sold for $514,000 at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.

Leslie Hindman Auctioneers held their Spring auction of Contemporary, Modern, American and European art on Wednesday, May 2nd. With a filled auction room of private collectors, dealers and very active telephone and online bidders, the sale was a resounding success.

The European and Old Master paintings session realized a total of $2.87 million. Much of the auction’s success can be attributed to the collection from the Lucie Sable Sandler Trust, which included two paintings by William Adolphe Bouguereau that brought a combined $1.2 million with premium. Each of the Bouguereau paintings went to successful international bidders from the United Kingdom. Also from the Sandler Trust, Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky’s Woman in a White Hat, sold to an East Coast buyer for $292,000.

In addition to realizing strong prices, the sale set auction records. Salvatore Marchesi’s Altar Boys achieved the highest price at auction for the artist. The painting sold for $36,600 against an estimate of $15-25,000. A record was set for the third highest price for an Antoine Blanchard painting, when a street scene realized $31,720. Additionally, sixteen international bidders from eight countries competed for works by Hermann David Salomon Corrodi, one of which brought $219,600, a price among the artist’s top ten records at auction.

The American Art session opened to a crowded auction room, bringing $902,353 against a presale estimate of $542,500-840,700. Competitive bidding on Asher Brown Durand’s Guard House, Catskill Mountains, which had remained in private hands for the last sixty years, drove the sale price to $146,400, the artist’s third highest auction price. Eight bidders competed for Leroy Neiman’s 1961 Vegas, which blew past the previous auction record and sold for $173,600 to a private collector in Minnesota. In addition, a rare Chicago scene by Guy Wiggins sold for $46,360.