The art market showed no signs of slowing during Heritages American Art Auction featuring choice works by such luminaries as Mark Rothko, Joseph Leyendecker and Thomas Moran. The Nov. 4 sale, which realized $6,895,750, was an explosion of bidding with a spectacular sell-through rate and broke auction records for a number of beloved American artists who have shaped the art of the last century. With more than 1,150 bids on just 218 lots, the excitement in the auction room on Friday felt like an American Art feeding frenzy, the likes of which I have not seen in my entire career, says Aviva Lehmann, senior vice president of American art at Heritage. Seeing this passion for American Art from both new and seasoned collectors thrills me beyond words. Rothko saw an auction record for an early figurative work from a seminal series: $1.45 million for A Last Supper. The painting was one of the very few private loans in a recent major Rothko retrospective at Viennas Kunsthistorisches Museum, and it is a crucial work in understanding Rothkos trajectory from figurative to abstract painter. Handling the sale of this important and formative museum-quality American masterwork was a career-high moment, says Lehmann. We knew we were in the presence of greatness when it came through the doors, and watching our clients marvel at this masterwork when it hung in our New York, Chicago, and Dallas galleries was extraordinary. We are thrilled to have found a new home for this American masterpiece. Artist and illustrator of the social realism school Stevan Dohanos saw an auction record for 1944s Penny Candy, a Saturday Evening Post cover, at $375,000. It is his best-known Post cover, a veritable Holy Grail, says Lehmann. Folk and Outsider Art was highly coveted in Fridays sale, with strong prices achieved for Thornton Dial and Purvis Young. Artist Tella Kitchen brought in a record for her 1975 oil-on-canvas Christmas at the Golden Lamb at $13,125. Sculptor and painter Artis Lane saw a new auction record for her mixed-media sculpture Emerging New Man at $20,000. Illustration was particularly strong in this event. Along with Dohanos, Arnold Lobel saw an auction record for his watercolor and pencil-on-paper Frog and Toad, ca. 1975-79, bringing $37,500. In the recent past, American art could underperform at auction, but those days seem to be behind us. It is no secret that I am committed, in heart and soul, to promoting every aspect of American Art and raising its profile in both the auction and scholarship world, says Lehmann. With each passing season at Heritage, we are setting more records and expanding the category. Our recent auction affirms our position as the go-to house for collectors and institutions seeking the finest American Art. And we are only just beginning. Institutions participated in the bidding. A sophisticated work on paper by Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Gathering Fruit, ca. 1893, sold to The Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia for $37,500. Other well-performing lots were Hughie Lee Smiths Boy with a Flute, an oil-on-canvas that sold for $312,500, the second-highest price at auction for the artist. As mentioned above, illustration was a strong suit for the event. Joseph Christian Leyendeckers Saturday Evening Post cover Town Crier (1925) sold for $423,000, and his 1906 Colliers Weekly magazine cover, The Discus Thrower, The American Victory at Athens, sold for $200,000. Norman Rockwells Maxwell House Coffee illustration featuring a terrier interrupting a chess game sold for $312,500. Hudson River School artist Thomas Morans work did exceptionally well in this auction. Two intimate oil-on-canvas pictures that shimmer with the atmospheric buzz of a quiet morning in the Italian port at Venice, both from 1906, brought in $125,000 and $109,000. One of these was from a larger group of Hudson River School paintings in this auction from the Santander Bank collection. A 1944 oil-on-canvas titled Bright Morning, Utah, by Maynard Dixon, master of the American West, brought $175,000. Dixons Abandoned Ranch from 1935 sold for $87,500. And Edward Willis Redfield, an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, sold for $137,500 for his oil-on-canvas, The Brook at Carversville, ca. 1925. A stirring painting by Texas artist G. Harvey, titled The Mountain Man (1976), tells the romantic story of the cowboys life surviving and thriving within the ever-changing landscape, and sold for $87,500. Our unmatched level of bidding, our constant record-shattering, and our stellar sell-through rate affirm Heritage Auctions standing as a permanent leader in the American Art field, says Lehmann. I am already excited to see where we go from here. For complete results, visit www.HA.com/8099.