A long-lost French Realist masterpiece by the Academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau was sold to a phone bidder for $950,000 hammer ($1.1m with premium) on 15 October at Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The painting, titled Rayon de Soleil (Sunbeam) (1899), had not been seen publicly since it was sold between 1909 and 1910 for around $6,500 by Moulton and Ricketts to a buyer in Elkhart, Indiana, and was passed on to his descents. It was offered at Cowan’s with a “conservative” estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
Wes Cowan, the founder of Cowan’s Auctions, was tipped on to the whereabouts of the painting through a friend who messaged him about it on Facebook. He subsequently discovered the work “hanging in the parlour of a modest clapboard home”, according to a press release. “In a tremendous display of generosity, [the consigner of the painting is] planning on using proceeds from the sale to establish an endowment fund for students in her hometown,” Cowan added.
The painting is a something of a coup for the auction house, marking only the third work that it has sold for more than $1m since it was founded in 1995. The next-highest lot in Fall Fine and Decorative Art auction was a landscape by the Russian artist Ivan Fedorovitch Choultsé that sold for $27,500 hammer ($33,000 with premium).
