| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Auctioneering |
| Founded | 1937 |
| Defunct | 1964 |
| Fate | Acquired by Sotheby's |
Number of employees | 115 (1964) |
Parke-Bernet Galleries was an American auction house, active from 1937 to 1964, when Sotheby's purchased it. The company was founded by a group of employees of the American Art Association, including Otto Bernet, Hiram H. Parke, Leslie A. Hyam, Lewis Marion and Mary Vandergrift. By 1964, the company was the largest auction house in America, [1] with 115 employees and total sales of $11 million ($108 million in 2023). That year, Sotheby's purchased a controlling interest of 75% in the gallery for $1.5 million ($15 million in 2023). [2]
The company was founded in 1937, by a group of forty former employees of the American Art Association, [3] including Otto Bernet, Hiram H. Parke, Leslie A. Hyam, Lewis Marion and Mary Vandergrift. In January 1938, the first auction was held in a gallery at 742 Fifth Avenue. The next year, the company took over the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, consisting of the American Art Association and the Anderson Galleries (formerly Anderson Auction Company). [4] [5] Parke-Bernet oversaw the sale of the estate of Georges Lurcy , a prominent art collector, whose estate included works by Raoul Dufy, Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The collection sold for over 2 million pounds in 1957, a record. Other customers of the company included Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Paul Mellon and Henry Ford II. Ford's purchase of La Serre by Renoir through Parke-Bernet was a world record. [3] Parke-Bernet also oversaw the sale of the estate of Hagop Kevorkian, the Armenian archaeologist, antiquities dealer, and philanthropist whose foundation gave major contributions to support the study of the Near East and Middle East at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Columbia University. [6]
The Parke-Bernet Galleries building is a building in New York City at 980 Madison Avenue that served as the headquarters of Parke-Bernet Galleries from its opening on November 10, 1949, to its sale in 1987. [7]
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Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Amsterdam, Geneva, Shanghai, and Dubai. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault. In 2022 Christie's sold US$8.4 billion in art and luxury goods, an all-time high for any auction house. On 15 November 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold at Christie's in New York for $450 million to Saudi Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al Saud, the highest price ever paid for a painting.
Sotheby's is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and maintains a significant presence in the UK.
Mary Quinn Sullivan, born Mary Josephine Quinn, was a pioneering collector of European and American modern and contemporary art and gallerist, and a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, which opened in rented space in New York City in November 1929. She also led a small group of Indianapolis, Indiana, art patrons who called themselves the Gamboliers and between 1928 and 1934 selected artworks of for the group that brought some of the first modern and contemporary works to the collections of the John Herron Art Institute, which later became the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Hagop Kevorkian was an Armenian-American archeologist, connoisseur of art, and collector. Originally from Kayseri, and a graduate of the American Robert College in Istanbul, he settled in New York City in the late 19th century, and was responsible for drawing greater attention to Near Eastern and Islamic artifacts in the United States.
Cortlandt Field Bishop was an American pioneer aviator, balloonist, autoist, book collector, and traveler.
In auctions, the buyer's premium is a charge in addition to the hammer price of an auction item, or lot. The winning bidder is required to pay both the hammer price and the percentage of that price called for by the buyer's premium. It is charged by the auctioneer in addition to the commission which has always been charged by auction houses to sellers. All of the buyer's premium is retained by the auction house and is not shared with the item's seller.
Acquavella Galleries is an art gallery located at 18 East 79th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
The Japanese Art Society of America (JASA) promotes the study and appreciation of Japanese art. Founded in 1973 as the Ukiyo-e Society of America by collectors of Japanese prints, the Society's mission has expanded to include related fields of Japanese art.
Edith Halpert or Edith Gregor Halpert was a pioneering New York City dealer of American modern art and American folk art. She brought recognition and market success to many avant-garde American artists. Her establishment, the Downtown Gallery, was the first commercial art space in Greenwich Village. When it was founded in 1926, it was the only New York gallery dedicated exclusively to contemporary American art by living artists. Over her forty-year career, Halpert showcased such modern art luminaries as Elie Nadelman, Max Weber, Marguerite and William Zorach, Stuart Davis, Peggy Bacon, Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, William Steig, Jacob Lawrence, Walter Meigs, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many others. Halpert later expanded her business to include American folk art, and certain nineteenth-century American painters, including Raphaelle Peale, William Michael Harnett, and John Frederick Peto, whom she considered to be precursors to American modernism.
Henri Vever (1854–1942) was one of the most preeminent European jewelers of the early 20th century, operating the family business, Maison Vever, started by his grandfather. Henri was also a collector of a broad range of fine art, including prints, paintings, and books of both European and Asian origin. By the 1880s, Vever became one of the earliest Europeans to formally collect Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, purchasing extensively from dealers such as Hayashi Tadamasa. He was a member of Les Amis de l'Art Japonais, a group of Japanese art enthusiasts including Claude Monet, that met regularly to discuss Japanese prints and other works over dinner.
Au Vélodrome, also known as At the Cycle-Race Track and Le cycliste, is a painting by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger. The work illustrates the final meters of the Paris–Roubaix race, and portrays its 1912 winner Charles Crupelandt. Metzinger's painting is the first in Modernist art to represent a specific sporting event and its champion.
The American Art Association was an art gallery and auction house with sales galleries, established in 1883.
John L. Marion is an American auctioneer and philanthropist. He served as the Chairman of Sotheby's from 1975 to 1994.
La Gommeuse is a 1901 oil-on-canvas painting by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It dates from his Blue Period and is noted for its caricature of Picasso's friend Pere Mañach painted on the reverse. Gommeuse was sexually charged slang of the time for café-concert singers and their songs. It was offered for sale ex the William I. Koch collection at a Sotheby's, New York, auction on 5 November 2015. The painting realized $67.5 million at the sale, a record for a Blue Period Picasso, placing the painting among the most expensive ever sold.
Mary Jane (Sexton) Morgan (1823–1885), initially a schoolteacher, became a fine art collector after her marriage to Charles Morgan. She was the second wife to the man who earned a fortune in the iron, railroad, and steamship industries. She also grew and collected orchids.
Peregrine Michael Hungerford Pollen was an English auctioneer who headed Parke-Bernet in the 1960s after it was purchased by Sotheby's. He was known for expanding the auction house in North America, and bringing a dramatic flair to auctions.
980 Madison Avenue is a building located at Madison Avenue and East 76th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It served as the headquarters of Parke-Bernet Galleries from its opening on November 10, 1949, to its sale in 1987. In 2006, TheNew York Times wrote that the building had functioned as "the Grand Central Terminal of the art world." The building is part of the Upper East Side Historic District.
After the Bath is a painting from 1910 by the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir representing his late work period (1892–1919). The painting is now in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Anderson Galleries began as an auctioner of books, prints, and occasionally called Anderson Auction Company. It was founded by John Anderson Jr. in 1900 and later renamed Anderson Galleries. In 1917, the gallery began selling antiques and art at their new location on Park Avenue and 59th Street. In the 1920s, Mitchell Kennerley, who ran the business, sold the works of Marsden Hartley, photographs of Alfred Stieglitz, and the works of Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, and Charles Demuth.
