Unheralded for years, painting goes for $1m
The painting that had belonged to a Cape Cod family for decades and only recently identified as a Martin Johnson Heade sold for more than $1 million yesterday at auction.
It was the biggest sale Eldred's auction gallery has made, said Bob Eldred, one of the owners and president of the East Dennis business.
The buyer was an "older gentleman," Eldred said, who "appeared out of nowhere. He was not someone who had been here before."
Annie Lajoie, who does marketing for Eldred's, said the buyer was a private collector who lived out of state. She said she didn't know if he collected Heades.
"There was a pretty gosh-darn full audience, and about six or seven phone lines that were actively bidding on it, and at least five people in the audience bidding on it."
Bidding began at $300,000, she said. The 14 1/4-by-7 1/2-inch painting, "Haying on the Marsh," sold for $1,060,000 in "two or three minutes," she said.
The auction house had estimated the painting would bring up to $500,000. But Eldred said the gallery had priced the Heade conservatively.
"My gut feeling told me the painting was going to bring a million dollars, and it did," he said. "But you don't want to tell people that beforehand, or they'll be discouraged."
Heade painted in the 19th century but wasn't popular then. Because his paintings were purchased by middle-class families, not collectors, many of his landscapes and still lifes have turned up in homes and at yard sales.
"Haying on the Marsh" had been passed down in the Cape Cod family since the 1860s.
The publicity surrounding the painting, which its owners brought to the gallery in March for appraisal, most likely drummed up interest, Lajoie said. "We were very happy. Slightly surprised."
As for the Cape Cod owners, who watched the auction, "They were pretty subdued, but very happy, very pleased," she said. "They didn't want to draw attention to themselves."
Maddie Hanna can be reached at mhanna@globe.com. 