Anonymous
daguerreotype of 
surgeon Dr. John 
Collins Warren, 
1840s.

Quarter-plate
The Blind Man and 
His Reader, 
1840s.

 David Octavius Hill 
and Robert Adamson:
The Artist and the 
Gravedigger, c. 1845.

 Hill and Adamson: 
The Minnow Pool 
(The Children 
of Charles Finlay),
 c. 1845.

Tina Modotti: 
Hands of the 
Puppeteer, 
1929.

Alfred Stieglitz: 
Georgia O'Keeffe:
A Portrait, 1922.

 Edward Weston, 
Nude on Sand, 1936.

Paul Outerbridge: 
Saltine Box, 1922.

Outerbridge: 
Ide Collar, 1922.

Outerbridge: 
Images de Deauville, 
c. 1936.

Andre Kertesz: 
Fork, 1928.

A: Edward S. Curtis: 
The North American 
Indian, Vol. 1-20, 
1907-30.

B: From Curtis, 
portfolio 2.

Nadar: 
Sarah Bernhardt, 
1859.

 Mike and Doug Starn: 
Seascape, 1987-88.

 
to market, 
to market...

photography & then some
by Judd Tully
 

 

Photography at auction scored impressively 
in April in New York as Christie's, 
Sotheby's and Swann Galleries tallied a 
robust total of $6.3 million in sales--with 
a somewhat less impressive buy-in rate 
averaging 29 percent.
The action began at Sotheby's on April 18 
with a superb single-owner collection of 
19th-century daguerreotypes and stereographs 
from the estate of the late (and reclusive) 
New Yorker, Abraham Stransky. The giant 
trove brought $745,864, close to twice its 
high estimate, and boosted the overall sale 
total to $2.4 million. Stransky was quite 
secretive about his extraordinary 
collection, painstakingly assembled during 
40-odd years of buying. His heirs approached 
the auction house out of the blue.
Of those old gems, the riveting portrait by 
an anonymous American photographer of 
surgeon Dr. John Collins Warren, sternly 
posed with a wax model of a human heart and 
a fetal human skeleton, hit $96,000 (est. 
$30,000-$50,000).
Of the non-Stransky 19th-century material, a 
wonderful daguerreotype double-portrait, The 
Blind Man and His Reader, the former in dark 
glasses and the latter holding a copy of The 
New York Herald, sold for $23,000 (est. 
$5,000-$7,000) to Pierre Apraxine, curator 
for the Gilman Paper Company.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson's 
calotype image from circa 1845,The Artist 
and the Gravedigger, sold for $10,925 (est. 
$8,000-$12,000) to New York dealer Hans P. 
Kraus, Jr., who also nabbed another rare 
Hill & Adamson calotype, The Minnow Pool 
(The Children of Charles Finlay), for 
$19,550 (est. $5,000-$7,000). 
Tina Modotti's expressive Hands of the 
Puppeteer was the top lot of the 20th-
century offerings, selling for $96,000 (est. 
$80,000-$120,000) to Beth Gates Warren, the 
former head of Sotheby's photography 
department.
Alfred Stieglitz's moody Georgia O'Keeffe: A 
Portrait failed to sell at $75,000 (est. 
$100,000-$150,000). It last sold at 
Sotheby's New York in October 1990 for 
$99,000 (all realized prices quoted include 
the buyers' premium of 15% up to $50,000 and 
10% thereafter). Market acceptance of six-
figure prices for single images is still 
something of a rarity.
More successful was the famously sensual 
vintage print by Edward Weston, Nude on Sand 
from 1936, that went for $59,200 (est. 
$50,000-$70,000) to Hot Sox impressario and 
collector Gary Wolkowitz
On April 23, Christie's just missed breaking 
its record photo-sale total, posting $3.1 
million in sales, of which a third came from 
the cache of vintage Paul Outerbridge Jr. 
prints deaccessioned by the Laguna Art 
Museum. They were given to the museum by the 
photographer's widow and sold to raise funds 
for acquisitions of California art, the 
museum's collecting speciality.
Of those masterworks,Saltine Box from 1922 
sold for a record $200,500 (est. $60,000-
$80,000) to an anonymous buyer, making it 
the eighth most expensive photography lot to 
sell at auction. It broke the previous 
artist record set in 1990 at Sotheby's when 
Outerbridge's masked Self-Portrait made 
$99,000 at the blockbuster Graham Nash 
single-owner sale.
Ide Collar, originally conceived as a Vanity 
Fair magazine advertisement for a shirt 
collar company in 1922, snared $189,500 
(est. $70,000-$90,000).
Outerbridge's c.1936 Carbro color print and 
cover lot,Images de Deauville, fetched 
$96,000 (est. $30,000-$40,000) after a 
fierce bidding war. SoHo dealer James 
Danziger won the prize for a client. The 
Outerbridge lots soared to a total hammer 
price of $938,200, over their presale 
estimate of $700,000. Christie's will offer 
another batch from the cash-strapped museum 
in the fall. 
Fork, Andre Kertesz's iconic image from 
1928, conceived after a dinner at Fernand 
Leger's studio, sold for a record $90,500 
(est. $90,000-$120,000).
Christie's was less successful in the 19th 
century, stung by the market rejection of 
Edward S. Curtis' epic publishing project, 
"The North American Indian." In an oddball 
kind of marketing aproach, Christie's first 
put 20 of the numbered Curtis portfolios 
(most containing 36 photogravures) up for 
sale individually, then computed the 
aggregate of the hammer prices and reoffered 
them as a single lot at the next highest 
bidding increment--in this case, $520,000. 
It didn't receive a single bid. As a result, 
the complete set, originally owned by 
railroad magnate James J. Hill (1838-1916), 
was broken up and scattered willy-nilly. 
(Another Curtis set sold at Sotheby's in 
1993 for a record $662,500). 
On April 24, Swann Galleries realized its 
highest tally to date when its sale totaled 
$818,628. Swann continues to profit from 
less-expensive modern and contemporary 
material rejected by giants Christie's and 
Sotheby's and subsequently consigned to its 
hands. "The results of this auction," said 
Daile Kaplan, director of photography at 
Swann's, "demonstrated a noticeable shift in 
the market toward modern images, and they 
brought strong prices."
Even so, the most dramatic lot hailed from 
1859 in the handsome guise of actress Sarah 
Bernhardt at the age of 14, taken by French 
photo legend Nadar. It brought $17,250 (est. 
$3,000-$4,000), and dealer James Danziger 
got his second cover lot. Though the image 
is indeed rare, it was printed in large 
numbers on postcard stock in 1875 and used 
by the actress to give out to her legion of 
fans.
On the contemporary front, a work by Mike 
and Doug Starn (aka The Starn Twins), 
Seascape, a distressed and nailed silver 
print from 1987-88, brought $3,680 (est. 
$4,000-$5,000).
The unusual five-day time gap between 
Christie's and Sotheby's sales (they usually 
go back-to-back) was due to the $34.4 
million Camelot sideshow--the Jacqueline 
Kennedy Onassis auction--at Sotheby's during 
the week of April 23. Prices there, as the 
famous electronics pitchman used to say on 
the telly, "are insane."
Take, for example, Joseph R. Spies' Tom 
Kitten, a mounted silver print dated 3-23-
61. Tom was none other than Caroline 
Kennedy's cat while she resided at the White 
House and it meowed to a whopping $14,950 
(est. $50-$75).
Possibly the most incredible lot was a beat-
up set of MacGregor woods housed in a red 
and black golf bag inscribed "JFK 
Washington, D.C." that sold to screen 
muscleman and Kennedy-clan relation Arnold 
Schwarzenegger for $772,500 (est. $700-
$900). But in terms of real art, paintings, 
drawings and sculpture from the estate of 
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis realized $6.2 
million of the take. Overall, the Jackie 
sale still fell far short of the $50.3-
million Duchess of Windsor sale in 1987.
Of that spotty melange, a charcoal portrait 
of JFK by the late Elaine de Kooning, dated 
1963, sold for $63,000 (est. $1,500-$2,500).
The most expensive piece of art, not 
surprisingly, was on the subject of horse 
flesh (or more properly, bloodstock), one of 
Mrs. Onassis' favorite pastimes. Lord 
Bateman's Arabian by the distinguished 18th-
century British sporting painter John 
Wootton brought $343,500 (est. $80,000-
$120,000). At least this picture had a 
provenance predating the White House or 
Aristotle Onassis years--it was commissioned 
by the 3rd Duke of Marlborough in 1733. 
Not far behind was Robert Rauschenberg's 
work on paper from 1960,Drawing for the 
President of the USA with Dante, that 
apparently sold to a real contemporary art 
collector and not a rabid Camelot fan, for 
$244,500 (est. $80,000-$100,000). In the mad 
scheme of things, it was a relative bargain.
Judd Tully covers the international art 
market for a variety of publications, 
ranging from Art & Auction to The Washington 
Post.