New Hampshire landscape painting auctioned for $687,500

PORTLAND – An anonymous buyer agreed to pay $687,500 for a painting of a New Hampshire landscape after winning a bidding war Saturday at an art auction.

The winning bid was the highest price ever for a work by Willard L. Metcalf, an artist who was popular in the early 1900s. Metcalf’s “Red Oak” was expected to sell for at least $150,000 and sparked interest from museums and large galleries across the country.

Auctioneer Bruce Buxton said the price was driven up in a matter of minutes when seven people bid by phone and a couple of others bid from the auction floor. Offers came from California, the Midwest and the East.

The top bid was made by phone, but Buxton would not say if the buyer was a museum, a gallery or an individual. The auction was held at an Elks Lodge in Portland.

“[The top bidder] asked not to be disclosed,” he said. “For that amount of money, it’s understandable.”

Metcalf is best known for his Impressionist landscapes. He was born in 1858 in Lowell, Mass., and trained at art schools in Lowell, Boston and Paris. He died in 1925.

In 1897, Metcalf and nine other artists fond of the Impressionist style formed Ten American Painters. A visit to Maine in 1904 helped Metcalf rediscover his love for painting the New England landscape, according to the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, N.H.

Starting in 1909, he began visiting an artist colony in Cornish, N.H., particularly during the winter months. He was a fisherman and naturalist, and critics found his paintings reflected poetic, idealistic views of the outdoors.

“Red Oak” was painted in Cornish in October 1911, Buxton said. It depicts a hillside with a red oak to the left, rolling hills, tiny sheep, a house atop a hill, and a stone wall.

The 40-inch-by-43-inch painting was displayed in 1912 at the Philadelphia Academy of Art before it was bought by a Maine family. It later was exhibited in the 1950s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but remained in the family home until its sale, Buxton said.

Buxton said he initially expected the painting to sell for $150,000 to $250,000. But he expected it to go for more after receiving so many inquiries about it.

“It was very well-received,” he said. “It was causing a huge buzz.”

Until Saturday, Metcalf’s “Maytime” was the artist’s highest-selling painting. It sold at Sotheby’s New York in 1988 for $638,000, according to news reports.

Christie’s New York sold a Metcalf painting, “Fish Wharves-Gloucester,” at a 1997 auction for $552,000.