It’s been a big week in New York for mid-century American figurative art. On the heels of the record $46m that a Norman Rockwell painting achieved at Sotheby’s, a 1934 Edward Hopper canvas, “East Wind Over Weehawken,” has sold for $40.4m, some $12m over its high estimate. The price was a new auction record for Hopper.
The painting, a melancholy work depicting a New Jersey suburb during the grim days of the Depression, exceeded by a wide margin Hopper’s former record, the $26.9m that a buyer paid for “Hotel Window” in 2006. Elsewhere in the Christie’s event, another Norman Rockwell, ”The Thing to Do With Life is Live It!,” sold for $1.6m.
