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Thursday, December 2, 1999

George Bellows painting sells for $27.5 million

Associated Press
 

NEW YORK - "Polo Crowd," a 1910 oil painting by George Bellows, sold at auction Wednesday to a private collector for $27.5 million - by far the record for any American painting.
   Sotheby's had estimated it would sell for between $10 million and $15 million. John Singer Sargent's "Cashmere" held the previous record for an American painting. Sotheby's sold it for $11.1 million in 1996.
   The painting was sold by the Museum of Modern Art to an anonymous telephone bidder.
   Bellows was best known for his paintings depicting American sporting life at the turn of the century. "Polo Crowd," with large splashes of blue and white, shows spectators - mostly women in long flowing white dresses, fancy hats and parasols - watching a polo match in Lakewood, N.J.
   The painting was left to the museum last year in the will of Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney. Whitney and her husband, John Hay Whitney, had amassed an impressive art collection. Much of it was donated to various museums, which were asked in advance about the works they wanted.
  
  

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