Current Prices

U.S. Painter Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose somber fantasies went almost unnoticed until after he died in 1917, once remarked that "The artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread, and his easel, and all the rest God gives him in abundance."

Art collectors are less fortunate. Last week, at a Manhattan auction, Ryder's Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens went for $23,500 (to Broker Chester Dale, who has spent over $6,000,000 for French and American paintings). Other buyers (mostly anonymous) paid $30,000 for one Toulouse-Lautrec, $27,500 for another. A Corot went for $18,000; a Cezanne portrait of his wife for $24,500; a view of the Seine by Daumier for $15,250, and one by Monet for $11,000; a Renoir nude sold for $12,000. Total evening's business: $221,500 for 20 paintings, almost double what art experts expected the lot to sell for.

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