An Irish painting by the American artist Rockwell Kent comes up at Sotheby’s American Art sale in New York on May 21. Craigbeefin dates to 1926-27 and is estimated at $70,000-100,000. In a catalogue note Sotheby’s say that the paintings Rockwell Kent created while in Ireland can be categorised in two groups: one, the detailed landscape and human infused compositions such as Annie Mc Ginley (private collection) and Dan Ward’s Stack (The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia); and two, the stark, modelled landscapes that focus more on abstract form–such as in the work of Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe–that are more a human reflection on the essence of the world around us. Craigbeefin represents the latter. It was exhibited in New York at Wildenstein & Company’s Important Exhibition of Paintings of Ireland and Elsewhere by Rockwell Kent (Paintings by Rockwell Kent), April-May 1927, and at the ACA Galleries in New York in 1989.
