Mignot’s oil painting ‘Tropical Scene’ soars to $120,000
The oil painting “Tropical Scene” by Louis Mignot soared past its estimate, finishing at $120,000, to lead all lots in a 275-lot auction presented by Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers.
MILFORD, Conn. – A previously unrecorded oil painting by the American artist Louis Remy Mignot
(N.Y./S.C., 1831-1870), titled Tropical Scene, soared to $120,000 at a spring auction at Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers. It was the top lot in a sale that grossed $2 million.
The oil painting, depicting figures traversing a Luminist tropical landscape, came out of a private collection in Switzerland. Measuring 24 inches by 39 inches, it was monogrammed and dated (1864) lower right and had been expected to hit at least $100,000. Mignot, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, began his career in New York City. He became associated with the artists of the Hudson River School, particularly Frederic Edwin Church, who would become his friend and mentor. In 1857, Mignot and Church traveled and painted across the tropical wilderness of Ecuador.
The auction featured 275 artworks (77 percent of which sold); internet bidding was provided by Invaluable.com. All quoted prices include the buyer’s premium.
There were two "catalogs within a catalog." One was a collection of 44 scenes of New York from the early 20th century to the present. The artists included such notables as Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883-1962), Paul Cornoyer (1864-1923), Lee Lash (1864-1935), Edmund Greacen (1876-1949), Johann Berthelsen (1883-1972), and Reginald Marsh (1898-1954).
Leading the group was a winter Manhattan scene from Wiggins, titled Fifth Avenue, which sold for $84,000. The oil painting by Paul Cornoyer, also a winter depiction of lower Manhattan, titled Washington Square in Winter, fetched $72,000.
Seven Fresh-to-the-Market Painting Offered
The other “catalog within a catalog” was a collection of seven newly discovered paintings by the Provincetown plein-air Impressionist artist Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930). The group was led by a large unfinished beach scene that sailed to $66,000. The group sold for a combined $141,600. The paintings descended in the same family since 1957.
The following are additional highlights from the sale: Western bronzes were highlighted by Cyrus Edwin Dallin’s (Am., 1861-1944) Appeal to the Great Spirit, a 21 1/2 inch model cast after the famous monumental sculpture in front of the MFA in Boston ($84,000); and a cowboy on a bucking bronco after Charles M. Russell (Am., 1864-1926), titled A Bronc Twister, 18 inches tall ($20,400).
Shannon’s conducts two major fine art auctions per year. The next sale will be held Oct. 27. To learn more about Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers and the firm’s upcoming schedule of auctions, visit www.shannons.com.
