American Western art has long had its share of serious, wealthy buyers willing to pay big bucks for action-packed — often violent — scenes of life on the frontier as it was lived by cowboys and Native Americans. In recent years, the appeal of the work, and greater recognition of the skill and importance of artists like Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, has drawn an even wider base of collectors, and even some international interest.
“We’ve seen lots of new collectors entering the Western market over the last two to three years,” says Mike Overby, a partner of Coeur d’Alene auctions, which holds one of the biggest sales of Western art each July in Reno, Nevada. The house’s recent $28.5-million sale was its highest total since 2008, he notes. “We used to be a bit of a niche, but Western art has definitely gained full-acceptance now as a nationally important genre. I believe people relate these historical paintings as being not just important to the history of the West but to the country as a whole.”
This year the house came within a hair of the $5.64-million record for a Remington — set at Sotheby’s in 2008 for the 1896 bronze sculpture “The Wounded Bunkie” — when it sold the artist’s painting “Cutting Out Pony Herds (A Stampede)” (1908) for $5.62 million. While Remington and Russell dominate the high end of this category, accounting for most of the $5-million to $6-million prices that top out auction levels, plenty of other Western artists have hit the six- and seven-figure sale mark. To give a sense of the heights that this genre has achieved in the market, we’ve rounded up some of the top-selling lots.
To see a gallery of the best-selling auction lots of Western art, click on the slideshow.