We visited Swann Galleries for the preview of African-American Fine Art. We saw paintings we liked, but most were out of our price range. I think this is a market requiring more knowledge than we have just yet before contemplating a bid.
We did make an outing of our trip to the Faltiron district and had lunch at a very good Greek restaurant, Kellari Parea Bistro, which we would recommend.
http://www.kellari-parea.com/
We went to Doyle's twice this weekend There was a good range of furniture, paintings, and decorative objects. As is often the case, some items look better or worse in person. One art nouveau cabinet that I profiled in a previous blog entry was disappointing in person. It just didn't look that well made.
Because there were a number of things we liked, the second visit was to finalize what we would bid on. We placed our absentee bids on two items. I will be deliberately vague until after the auction!
We bid under the low estimate on a painting that I like very much, but don't want to pay as much as the estimate range. The artist is a known American painter who worked at the turn of the 19th century. I googled him which turned up a Wikipedia entry and a fair amount of photos of his paintings. An interesting side fact is that he died on the Titanic.
There was a piece of furniture we also liked very much and we bid well above the high end of the range. We will have to wait and see if others like it as well as we do! I hope not. The auction is this Wednesday.
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