Word: bernet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Died. Hiram Haney Parke, 85, art appraiser and auctioneer who in 1937 co-founded Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries, which became the U.S.'s largest auction house, handling paintings, books, furniture, tapestries, stamps, etc.; in Mt. Airy, Pa. Parke brought down his hammer on some of the most grandiose sales in art history. Maintaining an air of disinterested opulence, he could up bids hundreds of dollars with a shrewdly timed word, thousands with a sentence. In 1928 he sold Gainsborough's The Harvest Wagon to Lord Duveen for $360,000, also peddled such miscellaneous treasures...
Most conspicuous sign of the times last week was an auction at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries. In just one hour. 29 middling-good impressionist and post-impressionist pictures were sold for a whopping $1,528,500. The auction was so crowded that 5,000 people were turned away, and half of the 2.000 ticket holders were forced to watch the bidding on closed-circuit television. The lot had been collected in a hurry over the past few years by Hotelman Arnold Kirkeby (Hampshire House, Beverly Wilshire. Saranac Inn, El Panama). He was selling them off faster...
...hardbound volumes, sold for $7.50. On hand to compete for 65 choice paintings ranging from Bonnard to Vuillard. and other treasures, Was a select list that included top U.S., British and European dealers plus no less than 250 U.S. millionaire art collectors. The results at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries last week staggered even old-hand auctioneers. The first night, bids for paintings rolled up an alltime high of $1,708,500.* Total for the three-day auction: $2,221,355, a sum that blew the roof right off the rising art market...
Just how intelligent was apparent last week to dealers and art collectors, 4,100 of whom turned up in one day to preview the collection. Faced with more than 4,000 applications for tickets to the auction, Parke-Bernet sent out 850 for the main, velvet-draped salesroom, another 700 for side galleries, where for the first time at a U.S. auction bidders could view the works in black and white on closed-circuit TV, have their bids transmitted by loudspeaker. Forewarned of the expected crush, Millionaire Collectors Nelson Rockefeller and Winthrop Aldrich arrived 1½ hours early...
From the first crack of the hammer by veteran Auctioneer Louis J. Marion, paintings by Picasso, Signac, Pissarro, Lautrec were knocked down at the top prices Parke-Bernet had noted in their confidential books. But when a handsome view of the Tuileries by Edouard Vuillard, appraised at $25,000, was placed on the stand, there was a long-drawn sigh of delight, followed by a bedlam of bids as 18 green-uniformed bid callers and four assistant auctioneers tried to keep up with the rush that shot the price in 2 min. 15 sec. from a $15,000 opener...