John Singer Sargent's 1908 "Cashmere," an arresting painting of the artist's niece elegantly swathed in a cashmere shawl and shown in seven poses, sold for a staggering $11.1 million Thursday. The buyer was an unidentified telephone bidder at Sotheby's sale of American paintings, drawings and sculpture in Manhattan.
The price established a record for the artist, exceeding the $7.6 million record set two years ago when Sargent's "Spanish Dancer" (circa 1881) was sold at Sotheby's in New York from the estate of Wendell Cherry, founder of Humana, the health-care corporation based in Louisville, Ky. The $11.1 million sale, far above the painting's $5 million-to-$7 million estimate, equals Sotheby's total sales last month at its evening sale of contemporary art in Manhattan.The painting, which experts have described as the largest and most elaborate of Sargent's Alpine figure subjects, was sold by the Robert Henry Benson Family Trust, from England; Benson bought the work in 1909. Whenever a painting brings so much money at auction, there is always speculation about who the buyer was. One name being bandied about is Sir Andrew Lloyd Web-ber, who has been buying big-ticket paintings in recent years.
Thursday's sale at Sotheby's also included 11 works from the Shel-burne Museum in Vermont. The Shelburne, which is struggling to overcome its financial problems, sold five works last month at Sothe-by's auction of Impressionist and modern paintings, drawings and sculpture in Manhattan. Those works, which included pieces by masters like Degas and Manet, fetched a total of $31.1 million.
But at Thursday's auction, the paintings the Shelburne put up for sale were greeted with mixed responses from bidders. Fitz Hugh Lane's "View of Baltimore" (circa 1850), which was estimated to bring $750,000 to $1 million, failed to sell; bidding stopped at $575,000. Martin Johnson Heade's "Orchids and a Beetle" (circa 1885 to 1889), which depicts exotic flowers in a tropical setting, sold for $255,500, just above its low estimate of $250,000. Albert Bierstadt's "Westphalian Landscape" (1855) didn't sell either. No one was willing to pay more than $85,000, well below its $125,000 low estimate. But Carl Rungius' "Mule Deer in Woods" sold for $217,000, more than three times its $60,000 high estimate.
The sale also included a rare 1779 white marble bust of Benjamin Franklin by Houdon, part of a collection formed by the British Rail Pension Fund. The Pension Fund bought the bust at Sotheby's in 1975 from the collection of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge for $340,000. Thursday, it was sold to Richard Feigen, the Manhattan dealer, for nearly $3 million, just at its low estimate. (Final prices include the auction house's commission: 15 percent of the first $50,000 plus 10 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)