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Audubon Records Soar Though 25% of the Birds Fail to Fly

by Lita Solis-Cohen

American Flamingo, plate 431 from an unbound incomplete double-elephant-folio set of engravings after John James Audubon's watercolors, sold for $197,900 (includes buyer's premium) at Christie's on June 25. It became the most expensive Audubon print ever sold at auction. At this sale plate 431 was one of a dozen plates from the Sachsen-Meiningen set of Audubon's The Birds of America to fetch more than $100,000. It broke the record for an Audubon print that had held since January 1999 when Christie's sold another copy of American Flamingo for $151,000.

Before this sale, several plates from The Birds of America had sold for more than $100,000 at auction, but none had ever been offered with such high estimates. Estimates are suggested hammer prices without the buyer's premium, which at Christie's is 19.5% on the first $100,000 and 12% on the amount in excess of $100,000. The American Flamingo was estimated at $200,000/300,000. The American White Pelican carried the same high estimate and sold for $175,500. Plate 1, Great American Cock Male (Wild Turkey), also estimated at $200,000/300,000, failed to sell at the auction but sold a day later for $119,500.

Though many of the plates sold well under the aggressive estimates, there were many record prices, pushing the Audubon market to a new high level.

The value of an Audubon print depends on condition; full margins and fresh color are very important. The reason that the Sachsen-Meiningen Audubons were very special and desirable was because they came from an unbound early set.

"This is the way subscribers saw the prints before they were sewn, cut down, or shaved to be bound," said New York City dealer W. Graham Arader, the biggest buyer at the sale. "This was an opportunity to collect Audubon in its purest form, to buy plates with deckled edges all around that show off the genius of James Whatman, the greatest paper maker."

How much of a premium was paid for plates from this unbound set with full margins and fresh color? In May 2003 Sotheby's sold a fine Snowy Heron, or White Egret, plate 242, for $102,000. The Snowy Heron in the Sachsen-Meiningen set sold for $153,100. It was the fifth-highest price in the sale.

The Snowy Owl, plate 121, fetched $186,700, topping the one sold at Christie's in March 2000 for $112,500. The American White Pelican, plate 311, went at $175,500, which topped the $76,375 paid at Christie's for another copy of the same image in January 2001. The Roseate Spoonbill, plate 321, brought the same price of $175,500 and topped the $69,000 paid for one at Sotheby's in January 2003.

The condition of most, but not all, of the Sachsen Meiningen prints was pristine. Some had creases and tears. The coloring was fresh because for more than a century they had lain forgotten in the ducal library and had not seen the light of day. It was an early set, however, and some say that later sets have corrected coloring after Audubon came back to London to supervise the progress.

Because the set remained unbound and was incomplete—11 plates are missing—Christie's and the consignors, 19 members of the Sachsen-Meiningen family who were advised by Wolf von Trotha, the trustee of the Saxe-Meiningen art collection, decided to auction the plates individually rather than offering them as one lot. This was despite the fact that in recent years complete sets of The Birds of America have sold for far more than when sold plate by plate. Broken sets are sold with the intention that each plate will be framed and hung on the wall. Even with the best 99% ultraviolet-blocking Plexiglas, color still fades when prints are displayed.

In March 2000 at Christie's, the Earl of Bute, John C. Bute, sold his set, which once belonged to George Lane Fox. That copy of The Birds of America sold as one lot in four volumes to Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed bin Ali Al-Thani, known as Sheikh Saud of Qatar, for just over $8.8 million. That was a record price and more than double its high estimate. The Sachsen-Meiningen family's The Birds of America sold plate by plate for a total of only $5,744,158. The presale estimate was $6/8 million. Of the 424 lots offered, 317 sold, which equals a 75% sold rate. Nevertheless, it was a record for a set of Audubons sold plate by plate at auction.

The previous record for a set sold plate by plate was made at Christie's way back in September 1987 when the 435 lots sold for $1,930,005. At that sale the Trumpeter Swan sold for $48,400, which made it an auction record for a single Audubon print. The Trumpeter Swan in the Sachsen- Meiningen set sold for $119,500.

Several plates were sold after the sale for their reserves, and offers have been made for the remaining plates. Francis Wahlgren, head of Christie's books and manuscripts department in New York, said that after 30 days the family would consider the offers. There is no question that they would have done better if they had sold their unbound set as one lot.

"They turned down my client's offer," said Arader after the sale. "I had been the underbidder on his behalf for the Bute copy in 2000, so when I heard this set was to be offered, I went to Christie's and offered to buy it for seven million dollars. I have copies of the missing eleven plates, which I offered to my client for one hundred sixty-five thousand dollars to make it a complete set."

Francis Wahlgren confirmed that before the sale he had relayed offers to purchase the Sachsen-Meiningen set.

Arader said a week after he was turned down, he went back to Christie's and offered $8 million, firm, and was turned down again. "Just a week before the sale, I offered nine million plus twelve-percent commission to Christie's. I was going to make a two-percent commission," said Arader. "I am the greatest breaker of books, and I thought this one should have been kept together," Arader recounted. "It was the set made for the king and queen of England, and I wanted it for my client, a passionate conservationist."

Arader said that the family listened to his pleas but would not sell. "They came to the sale, sat on the last row in the salesroom with long, teary faces. They knew they had listened to the wrong advisor," Arader said.

It appears that collectors got some fine prints at bargain prices, if a private collector was willing to pay nearly double the total. Arader spent nearly $900,000 on 26 lots and another $119,500 for the Great American Cock Male on the following day.

Harry Newman of The Old Print Shop in New York City was the second-biggest buyer. Newman spent a bit less and was the most active underbidder. "It was a fine set, a real lesson in connoisseurship. Going over it plate by plate and discussing the color variances was a lot of fun," said Newman.

The Sachsen-Meiningen set of Audubon's The Birds of America was the only set of Audubons in Germany. It was the set Queen Adelaide (1792-1849), née Adelheid, wife of King William IV of England, left to her brother, Duke Bernhard II Ehrich Freund of Saxe-Meiningen. Adelheid was the Duchess of Clarence when she was listed as Audubon's second subscriber.

From 1827 until 1838, Audubon sold sets of 435 engravings of The Birds of America by subscription, sending five plates at a time in tin cases in 87 parts. With this magnum opus he claimed to represent all known species found in North America, shown life-size. A complete subscription to the hand-colored engravings cost a little more than $1000, a big sum at the time. Subscribers either bought portfolios for them at an extra cost or had them bound. Audubon suggested they be bound.

Approximately 200 completed sets were produced. There were 161 people on the list of subscribers for the full set of these huge prints known as the double-elephant folio. Each printed plate was made on a full sheet of handmade paper that measured about 39 inches x 26 inches before trimming. Most sheets from bound sets measure about 38 inches x 25 inches because they have been variously trimmed to facilitate binding.

According to Christie's catalog, in 1973 a census of the sets was made. Of the 119 complete copies of this greatest of all bird books known, 108 were in institutions and 11 in private hands. Since 1973, 20 sets have been auctioned. Of these, 12 have been sold sheet by sheet, and one incomplete set, missing volume VI, was also broken and sold. In 1973 the Sachsen-Meiningen copy and the Bute copy were listed among the missing sets.

The Old Print Shop has in the 106 years of its existence broken nine and a half sets, including one unbound set in the 1950's. There are only a few uncut sets known. Arader knows of four: one at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and three others owned by billionaires. A fifth set with 330 of the 435 plates is in the library of Sheikh Saud in Qatar.

The Sachsen-Meiningen set appears in an 1850 inventory of the private ducal library in their castle in Thuringia. It remained there until after the Second World War. When the Russians took control of Germany they confiscated the ducal properties. Prince Georg, then head of the house, died in a Soviet prison camp in Siberia in 1946. During the war, the ducal library had been hidden in a cave beneath the family's castle. After the war, when the Russians confiscated the ducal art collection and library, a librarian pulled out about 300 books, including the Audubon. In the 1950's the East German secret police heard about the books, and the local government took possession of them and sent them to the museum established in the old ducal castle.

The Audubon folio of birds was recently returned to the heirs of the Sachsen-Meiningen family as a result of a settlement between the family and the regional government of Thuringia. The family waived its rights to large portions of their art collection consisting mostly of Dutch, Italian, and Spanish old master paintings for the benefit of the Cultural Foundation of Meiningen. The present prince of Saxe-Meiningen, writing for the Christie's catalog, told how the family lost their ancestral home and possessions and waived their rights to large portions of the art collection and received the Audubons as compensation.

The sale gave the Audubon market a shot in the arm. Graham Arader said that in the week after the sale he sold Audubons from stock for prices far less than the record prices paid at auction.

Harry Newman of The Old Print Shop said he went to the sale with 100 bids in his pocket for one client and was successful on just 17. He added that he bought a few more after the sale.

"We print prices on The Old Print Shop Web site, as we have done over the years in our catalogs, and I came back from the sale and raised some prices," said Newman. "Not one small bird sold for under two thousand three hundred ninety dollars, and we were asking one thousand five hundred and two thousand for some of them that sold for four thousand and more, and not every one of them was perfect. Some prints in this sale were sold `as is' and for very big prices."

Arader said Audubon collecting is all about buying the icons. "The little birds have been selling in the three- to five-thousand-dollar range for years, but the icons have soared, rising in price about four times every ten years for the last thirty years. That is sixteen times in twenty years, sixty-four times in thirty years! Every time there has been a lull in the market, another passionate collector enters the field, and prices move up. When the Sheikh of Qatar came along, his steady buying put a floor under this market."

About 200 people witnessed this landmark sale. That's a large crowd for a sale held so late in June. In addition to Arader and Newman, several other dealers were successful buyers. Of the top ten lots, however, all but two went to private collectors, most of them Americans. The anonymous phone bidder who bought the American Flamingo for $197,900 also bought the American White Pelican for $175,500. There was much speculation that it was Sheikh Saud of Qatar who wanted a few choice Audubons to frame.

For more information, contact Christie's at (212) 636-2000; Web site (www.christies.com).