The opening of event of the new year at Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) included over 60 golf and other sports themed lots from the collections of Richard McDonough.
The star turn, at $60,000 (£43,795), was College Football by Joseph F Kernan, a signed oil on canvas artwork for an image that provided the cover illustration to a 1932 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.
This was one of 26 covers produced for what was then a weekly journal by an illustrator whose work, said the cataloguer, graced the covers and pages of nearly every major magazine, as well as advertisements and calendars produced between the 1920s-40s.
Two of the other lots featured here were also produced for The Saturday Evening Post.
Conference on the Mound by Leslie Thrasher – $30,000 (£21,900) at Swann.
Sold at $30,000 (£21,900) was Conference on the Mound, an oil by Leslie Thrasher that appeared in a June 1912 issue, and again one of many he produced for that journal, while Hitting the Links of Palm Beach was sold for $9500 (£6935).
The latter, a signed gouache artwork produced around 1920 by Ruth Eastman, a member of the famed Eastman-Kodak family, was making a rapid return to the New York saleroom, having been previously offered in a June 2018 sale. This time out it was acquired by the United States Golf Association’s museum & library collections.
The sale took place on January 28.
