Stolen Art DealerOil painting by Winslow Homer: a boy in a broad-brimmed straw hat sits on a log in a sun-dappled wooded clearing, paring a stick with a knife.
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Catalogue No. 1374 · Christie's · New York
The Whittling Boy
About $2.5 million in today’s money: 29 years of the typical US household’s income. Source
- Artist
- Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
- Title
- The Whittling Boy
- Date
- 1873
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 39.4 x 57.4 cm (15 1/2 x 22 5/8 in.)
Winslow Homer (1836–1910), the American painter, made The Whittling Boy in 1873. It is an oil on canvas, 39.4 by 57.4 centimetres (15 1/2 by 22 5/8 inches). A boy in a broad-brimmed straw hat sits on a log in a sunlit clearing in the woods, absorbed in paring a stick with a knife.
The painting was sold at Christie's New York on 26 May 1994, as lot 19, consigned as the property of an Eastern institution. The estimate was $1,200,000–1,800,000. Geraldine Norman reported in The Independent on 5 June 1994 that it sold for $1,102,500. The report does not say whether the figure includes the buyer's premium.
Christie's provenance shows that the consignor acquired the picture at the Winslow Homer estate sale held by Doll & Richards in Boston, on 14 February 1912. The institution is not named. The Terra Foundation for American Art says the painting entered its Chicago collection in 1994, by way of Berry-Hill Galleries in New York.
The sale
- Auction house
- Christie's, New York
- Date
- 26 May 1994
- Lot
- 19
- Estimate
- $1,200,000–1,800,000
- Sold for
- $1.1 million (including buyer’s premium) · $1,102,500
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Provenance
1912-02-14
Doll & Richards, Boston (Winslow Homer Estate Sale); acquired by the present owner February 14, 1912
1994-05-26
Sold at Christie's New York, lot 19 (consigned as Property of an Eastern Institution)
1994
Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York; Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, 1994 Reported
Sources
- Christie's, lot 19, Winslow Homer, The Whittling Boy
- Geraldine Norman, The Independent, International Art Market: Impressionism gives way to home-grown realism (5 June 1994)
- Terra Foundation for American Art, collection record, The Whittling Boy (1994.12)
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Conversations with the Collection, The Whittling Boy
Prices include the buyer’s premium, in US dollars at the time of sale, unless marked as a hammer price.