Going once, going twice, gone with the wind: A rare sailing masterpiece, by one of America's best artists, is going under the hammer
'The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet' by Edward Hopper is one of the highlights of Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction.
Edward Hopper painted The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet (1944) at the zenith of his career, alongside other, heavily studied works such as Nighthawks (1942).
He had, like myriad artists that preceded and would come after him, struggled for years without recognition. Light began to appear at the end of the tunnel in 1930, when the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) acquired Hopper’s House by the Railroad (1925) for its permanent collection. It was the first oil painting that the museum purchased and went on to be exhibited in their 1933 retrospective of his work.
Edward Hopper was an imposing six-feet-and-five-inches tall. He towered over most people and thus earned the childhood nickname 'Grasshopper'.
It was around this time that Hopper first visited and rented a cottage in South Truro, Massachusetts, with his wife, Jo. Initially both seeking an escape from the stress and heat of New York City, Hopper’s new-found relationship with The Cape would come to define and anchor his work for nearly half a century. When he died, at the age of 84 in 1967, he painted more than 100 canvases during his time there, often working plein air or from inside his car.
For the rest of their lives, the couple spent roughly six months of every year living and working in Truro, according to The Whitney Museum of American Art, in whose permanent collection there is a preliminary charcoal study of Martha McKeen.
The finished painting depicts a sailboat off the Cape’s coast, on an August morning, and is named after Hopper’s friends, Martha and Reggie McKeen, with whom the artist often went on sailing excursions on board their boat. The artist’s signature is clearly visible in the bottom right-hand corner. The 1940s were a tumultuous time for everything including art, particularly in America. The fractured perspectives of Cubism, the outrageous colour palettes of Fauvism and the radical exploration of light by the Impressionists all jostled for attention. What makes Hopper’s Martha McKeen all the more remarkable is his ability to shut out this artistic noise, resist the prevailing fashions and remain entirely true to his own distinctive vision.
Its appearance at auction is notable not only for its beauty and skill, but because it is one of just five major Hopper sailing masterpieces, and one of two left in private hands. Its current owner is the Thyssen-Bornemisza family on whose walls it has hung for more than 45 years. The prominent European dynasty’s fortune was forged in the steel and coal industries, and plenty of it was spent amassing one of the world’s most significant private art treasure troves. Think Albrecht Dürer, Caravaggio, Hans Holbein the Younger and Peter Paul Rubens.
Martha McKeen could, now, be yours, assuming, of course, that the wind is blowing in a favourable direction.
'The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet' will be auctioned off as part of The Modern Evening Auction in The New York Sale, on November 18, in partnership with Celine. Visit the Sotheby’s website for more information and to register to bid.
