NEW YORK—A set of 21 colotypes from Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” series was the top lot at Swann Galleries’ sale of photographs from the collection of Stephen L. White on March 23, fetching $57,600, nearly triple the estimate of $15,000/20,000, and setting a record for a work by the artist. The images, taken between 1872 and 1885 and printed in 1887, were purchased by a private collector in active bidding.
The auction otherwise underperformed, bringing in a total of only $813,550—well under the overall estimate of $1.26million/1.8million—with 143, or 60 percent, of the 239 lots finding buyers.
James Wallace Black’s 1868 albumen print of Kit Carson did well, selling for a record price for the artist of $48,000 (estimate: $30,000/45,000), and Andrew J. Russell’s albumen print Golden Spike Ceremony with Flag and Camera, Promontory Point, Utah, 1869, sold for $43,200 (estimate: $20,000/30,000). Helmut Newton’s silver print Woman Observing Man, Saint-Tropez, 1975, printed in the 1980s, brought a record $40,800 (estimate: $30,000/40,000), and Mario Giacomelli’s portfolio of 18 silver prints The People, 1956–68, made in 1981, took $33,600 (estimate: $25,000/35,000).
Lewis Hine’s silver print Waiting for the Red Cross Lady, Drought Area, Arkansas, ca. 1933, sold for $16,800, well above the estimate of $5,000/7,500, and his silver contact print Spinner, Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia, 1909, sold for a record price of $26,400, also exceeding its estimate, of $12,000/18,000. However, a 1930 print of Hine’s Coal Breaker Boys, 1910, found no takers with an estimate of $20,000/30,000.
