Randolph College’s ‘Troubadour’ sells for $7.2 million

 
 
Rufino Tamayo's 'Trovador' was sold by Randolph College to increase its endowment. The college plans to sell three more.

The 1945 Rufino Tamayo oil painting known locally as the cornerstone of Randolph College's limited Latin American collection was sold to an anonymous phone bidder in a Christie's auction Wednesday evening for a record-breaking $7,209,000.

The controversial sale of "Trovador," also known as "The Troubadour," was estimated to bring in $2 million to $3 million as the lead piece among 320 paintings and sculptures in the auction house's two-day sale in New York.

The painting set a world auction record for Latin American art.

It was the first of four paintings Randolph College has considered selling from its collection.

The previous record was set in May 2006 at $5.6 million for Frida Kahlo's painting entitled "Roots," said Christie's spokeswoman Sung-Hee Park.

The $7.2 million price tag includes a roughly $800,000 fee the buyer pays to Christie's, said college spokeswoman Brenda Edson. The college actually receives $6.4 million, she said.

"We're happy we were able to finally sell the painting and bring some resolution to at least part of this," Edson said after the sale, which was recorded on the Christie's Web site just after 7 p.m. Wednesday. "The ultimate sale of all four paintings will allow this college to enhance the educational experience we are able to offer to our students. That experience will still include a wonderful art collection."

Christie's spokeswoman Sara Fox said the high price tag was not a complete shock because the work had garnered much interest leading up to the sale.

She described the auction scene at Christie's Rockefeller Plaza in New York, with about 500 people seated as an auctioneer took bids from a podium at the front of the room.

As the auction began at 6:30 p.m., staff placed at phone banks along the side of the room began taking calls from clients placing bids, and clerks walked the room keeping track of the sale.

The room hushed as lot 18 - the Tamayo piece - was announced, Fox said.

"It was very active bidding," she said. "There were people bidding in the room and on the phone."

The auctioneer announced the winning bid with a bang of his hammer, Fox said, and the room burst into applause at the new world auction record.

She said Christie's could not release any information on the bidder.

Edson said the school plans to add the money to its $153 million endowment and decrease a high spending rate.

Opponents - including students, donors, patrons and former employees of the museum - have said the auction violates widely accepted ethical guidelines, which dictate that art sale proceeds should be used only to strengthen the collection.

National art organizations, including the Association of Art Museum Directors and the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, also have issued statements condemning the college for its actions.

Ellen Agnew resigned in August after 23 years at the college's Maier Museum of Art because she felt the college was violating rules that it previously had agreed to follow.

"There is no integrity in what the college did," she said Wednesday night. "And you really kind of ask yourself, 'What have they gained?' They have money now that will be spent in the blink of an eye … and the students at the college have lost an irreplaceable treasure that really was given for their education and enrichment, and that's something that they'll never get back.

"It has stripped the museum of its integrity, really, as an institution that honors donor intent and holds works of art in public trust for future generations."

Edson on Wednesday said the school still has made no definite plans for the other three paintings - George Bellows' "Men of the Docks," Edward Hicks' "Peaceable Kingdom," and Ernest Hennings' "Through the Arroyo" - which remain in a Christie's storage facility in New York.

She said the college will sell them when the timing is most financially advantageous.

In total, the four paintings are expected to raise at least $32 million.

The works originally were slated for auction last November, but opponents filed an injunction that barred the sales.

Opponents raised only half of the required $1 million bond finalizing the injunction, which as a result was lifted in February.

Opponents have said they hope to address the matter in a lawsuit that was heard before the Virginia Supreme Court in April. A ruling on the lawsuit is expected on June 6.

Coined the charitable trust case, it challenges the former Randolph-Macon Woman's College's use of donations and assets to benefit a now coeducational student body.

Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Leyburn Mosby Jr. dismissed the case last year, and the higher court is expected on June 6 to state whether it will uphold that decision, send the case to trial or anything in between.

Opponents of the sale of art have questioned the college's decision to auction "Trovador" in the week before that decision is expected.

Edson said the college has the legal right to sell the Tamayo and the other three paintings whenever most financially advantageous.

"It's not about waiting a few weeks - these auctions only come twice a year," she said. "You have to look at the market; you have to look at the economy; you have to do it when the timing is right."

Painting donation surprised trustees in 1950

Rufino Tamayo’s “Trovador” came to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1949 as part of an art dealer’s attempt to “make something worthwhile out of that little school of yours down in the Virginia hinterland.”

A batch of letters between New York-based American art dealer Robert McIntyre, former R-MWC President Theodore H. Jack, and others from 1949 to 1950 provide a glimpse into how the college acquired the painting that sold for a record-breaking $7.2 million in a New York auction Wednesday.

Over a 20-year period in the mid-1900s, McIntyre gave or directed more than 70 works to the college’s art collection, said Ellen Agnew, an R-MWC alumna who worked at the Maier Museum of Art for 23 years before resigning in August.

One of those works was “Trovador,” which was donated by art collector and benefactor Stephen C. Clark, under the direction of McIntyre.

According to the letters, which Agnew obtained while conducting personal research “years ago” at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, McIntyre wrote to Jack in December 1949 informing him of the donation of “Trovador” as well as 10 additional paintings from other donors.

Jack replied about a week later, writing, “I am as near being speechless as I have ever been in my life, and even my array of dictionaries has failed me. … And to all this, to have a Tamayo from Mr. Clark. (Trustee) Harriet Fitzgerald was all in a dither over this, and so am I.”

On the same day, Jack also penned a letter thanking Clark for the gift.

“We have, as you may know, here at this little College a remarkable collection of paintings and the addition of a Tamayo adds immeasurably to it,” he wrote. “We shall cherish this canvas with great pride and shall be constantly mindful of your interest and of your great generosity.”

As for the donor of the Tamayo, Stephen C. Clark, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, donated hundreds of works to public art institutions from the 1930s to the 1960s, according to “The Clark

Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings,” compiled and published in 2006 by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.

The book, which focuses on Stephen and Sterling Clark, states that “the brothers inherited the Clark family’s long tradition of philanthropy, each contributing to the creation and enhancement of some of the most important arts institutions in this country.”