Audubon
For collectors, it is the equivalent of spotting the rare ivory gull or Bicknell's thrush: the chance to own an original copy of John James Audubon's "Birds of America."
Photos: Audubon's Rare Birds
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[SB10001424052748703572404575634662264953350]
Next month, a well-preserved original edition of the book is set to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London, and high-profile book collectors are circling the prey. Speculation about potential top bidders is swirling around a handful of hedge-fund managers, a retail heiress, a prominent rare-book dealer and a number of wealthy Russian and Japanese collectors. Sotheby's has valued the book at about $6.2 million to $9.3 million, making it one of the most expensive books ever sold at auction.
The work arrived in New York from London late last month, the four volumes each fastened with double locks, covered in blankets and bubble-wrap and secured inside a crate. Sotheby's opened a hushed room on the ninth floor of its New York headquarters during the auction house's off hours so several secretive collectors could enjoy a private viewing.
View Full Image
COVER_MAIN1
Illustration by JT Morrow
COVER_MAIN1
COVER_MAIN1
"It's good, very good," murmured Joel Oppenheimer, a dealer from Chicago, as he turned the pages on a recent morning during general viewing hours, his blue eyes scanning each of the book's 435 life-size bird illustrations from top to bottom. He spent two hours bent over the roughly 170-year-old volumes, running a finger over a mended tear under the canvasback duck and staring into the beady red eye of the hairy-necked Californian vulture.
When Sotheby's puts the book, Lot 50, up for sale on Dec. 7, auction executives will be holding their breath. An original copy of "Birds of America"—like a Picasso, a Warhol or a Fabergé egg—has long been seen as a critical trophy for a serious art collector. After record-breaking sales of work by artists Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and other marquee names this fall, a blockbuster price for "Birds" would further signal that art-world trophy hunters are out in force again and bidding aggressively.
The book's value is a function of its scarcity, its beauty and its significance to the field of natural history. The high-water mark for "Birds" came in 2000, when a bound set sold at Christie's for a record $8.8 million to a buyer identified by rare-book experts as Sheikh Saoud Bin Mohammad Bin Ali Al-Thani of Qatar, after a bidding war. More recently, sales of the book have been shakier. In the last year or so, two other copies have been shopped around privately, dealers say, but at least one of them did not sell because it was considered too expensive, priced at roughly $10 million. In 2005, an unbound original edition of the book sold at auction for $5.6 million, below Christie's high estimate of $7 million—a modest result due partly to what dealers call the book's flawed condition.
Prize Pages
Notable sales of manuscripts and rare books
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BIRDSIDE
Alamy
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
Gospels of Henry the Lion, a 12th-century illuminated manuscript created by a Benedictine monk, sold for $11.3 million at Sotheby's in London in 1983. A group of buyers led by the German government acquired the manuscript, which is kept at Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Everett Collection
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
In October, a first edition of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" (a scene from the movie adaptation is pictured) sold at Sotheby's for $258,164, a record for the book at auction. The 1847 book about love and madness on the moors, which was issued in a set with Anne Brontë's "Agnes Grey," features marbled covers with gilt decoration on the spines.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Corbis
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
If a Gutenberg Bible were to come up for sale today, it would likely demolish all previous records for sales of rare books. The first significant book printed with moveable type, completed by roughly 1455 in Mainz, Germany, it has been sold on rare occasions before. In 1978, for instance, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin purchased a Gutenberg Bible at a private sale for $2.4 million.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Corbis
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
The Codex Leicester, an early-16th-century scientific manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci, sold for $30.8 million to Bill Gates in 1994. Mr. Gates has said he purchased the work after a long-held fascination with the Renaissance artist, who mused in the work about subjects as diverse as the moon's glow, fossils and the properties of water.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Alamy
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
In 2006, a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare's 36 plays, sold for $5.2 million at Sotheby's. The 17th-century book, hailed as one of the finest copies to sell at auction, was purchased by a London book dealer. Another copy is coming up for auction at Sotheby's in London next month, estimated at between $1.6 million and $2.3 million.
Sotheby's is now trying to reset a high price for the book, and it's not taking any chances. A team of roughly a dozen experts has been doing advance work for the past two months. The auction house decided to display the book in New York at the height of the fall auction season, when the building was already teeming with art collectors. Sotheby's invited 20 serious potential bidders to a private luncheon and a cocktail reception in New York (chicken and duck were excluded from the menu, as is the practice at Sotheby's events for ornithological work). Last month in London, about 20 people, including some Americans, viewed the book privately, and more are expected to do so in the coming days.
David Goldthorpe, the London-based Sotheby's rare-book expert who is running this sale, accompanied the book to New York late last month, carrying a key to each double-locked volume in his briefcase. Moments after Sotheby's announced the book's sale in early September, he was on the phone, running through what he calls "a significant list of top clients" whose profiles he keeps on his computer. The next morning, glossy pamphlets landed on the doormats of at least 500 collectors around the world.
When asked for names of people who already possess original sets, Mr. Goldthorpe replied, "The Queen."
Adding to the intrigue: In recent days, Christie's quietly unveiled its own complete set of "Birds of America" in London, offering collectors a sneak peak ahead of its anticipated sale in January 2012 in New York. Collectors in London for the Sotheby's auction can stop by and see the Christie's set, which was owned by the fourth Duke of Portland and remained until now at the family's country estate in England. Christie's is valuing its set at roughly the same amount as the Sotheby's volumes.
Mr. Audubon painted the illustrations of "Birds of America" between 1827 and 1838. An avid hunter and taxidermist, he shot the birds and stuffed them, stringing them through with wires and positioning them in lifelike poses for his watercolors. The images were then printed on copperplate and colored by hand in London under the supervision of Robert Havell Jr., who engraved many of the book's plates. The engravings were originally sold unbound, a collection of five plates shipped to subscribers every month over more than a decade. At the time, a complete set cost roughly $800—or about $19,000 today.
Currently, only 11 of the roughly 200 original "Birds of America" sets are in private hands. About 100 belong to institutions. The rest have been destroyed, lost, or broken up and sold as individual prints. Rumored private owners include Texas oil-industry billionaire Lee Bass, the family of late publishing billionaire William Ziff Jr. and retired Atlanta real-estate developer Tom Cousins. Mr. Bass and the Ziff family declined to comment through representatives; Mr. Cousins couldn't be reached for comment.
As the Sotheby's auction approaches, art-world speculation about potential bidders has bubbled up around several candidates. One oft-cited possibility: Alice Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress. For the last six years, she has been aggressively acquiring Americana for her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, set to open next fall in Bentonville, Ark. The Walton Family Foundation already bought another American masterpiece for the museum: "Kindred Spirits," an 1849 landscape by Asher B. Durand, for more than $35 million in 2005. She is not believed to have acquired the book to date.
New York-based rare-book and print dealer Graham Arader calls Ms. Walton a "two-ton gorilla" in the collecting of Americana right now and said the book would be a draw for visitors to her museum. Crystal Bridges Deputy Director Sandra Edwards says two "Birds of America" sets, neither of them the Sotheby's copy, were brought to the attention of the museum's curator in the past year. "The professional staff considered these and chose not to pursue," she said in a statement. "Anything beyond that is pure speculation."
Another candidate: Paul Tudor Jones, the Greenwich, Conn., hedge-fund manager. Mr. Jones bought the less pristine "Birds" at Christie's in 2005, according to people familiar with the sale. That copy, which belonged to the Providence Athenaeum in Rhode Island, was what one Audubon expert called "a ghastly train wreck" that had been poorly restored twice. Still, it sold within five minutes. Mr. Jones declined to comment.
One person familiar with the auction identifies a possible bidder as Richard Chilton Jr., a 52-year-old hedge-fund executive from Connecticut with a taste for sporting artwork, 18th-century American furniture and 19th-century American paintings. He also is known to possess a large collection of Audubon prints already. Mr. Chilton declined to comment.
$30.8 million
Amount Bill Gates paid for the Codex Leicester in 1994.
Dealers also are keeping an eye on Russian collectors, who have helped push art prices higher in recent years, and Japanese collectors, who in the past have shown an interest in rare books. Of course, a surprise bidder could always emerge—or the book could fail to sell or fall short of the price Sotheby's is hoping for.
In the 1980s, it was fairly common practice to break up sets and sell the pages as individual prints. Those engravings can now fetch from $2,000 to more than $200,000, depending on the plate's condition and the popularity of the bird in the picture. But as complete sets became rarer, their value rose. The book is no longer broken up because it can fetch about twice as much whole as in pieces. Besides, breaking up books is now viewed with distaste by the book-collecting community.
The set for sale next month, which art dealers have called beautifully preserved, comes from the estate of the late Lord Hesketh, who died 55 years ago after helping compile an all-star collection of rare books and prints. The auction is a sale of the nobleman's collection, with "Birds of America" coming up after a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio (estimated to sell for between $1.6 million and $2.3 million).
If the recent sale of individual Audubon prints is any guide, the book could fetch a high price, appealing to book connoisseurs, art collectors and nature lovers. Last year, when the art market was still sluggish, Audubon prints comprised two of the three top sales at a Christie's auction of American furniture, folk art and prints. At a rare-book auction at Sotheby's last month, first editions of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" realized the highest prices ever for those works at auction, according to Sotheby's. "Pride and Prejudice" sold for $220,210.
View Full Image
COVER_JUMP1
Ofer Wolberger for The Wall Street Journal
'Birds of America' on display at Sotheby's in New York. Each volume measures about 4½ feet across when open.
COVER_JUMP1
COVER_JUMP1
Other manuscripts have sold for more money (the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific observations and drawings by Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, went for $30.8 million to Bill Gates in 1994), but those works are not printed books.
At least one other "Birds of America" might come on the market soon. The National Audubon Society has loaned an original set to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries in Washington for more than 10 years. Last winter, Audubon officials mentioned to the director of the Libraries, Nancy Gwinn, that the Society might be interested in selling its set privately, Ms. Gwinn says. A former Audubon board member confirmed the possible sale. The Society did not respond to requests for comment.
At the London sale next month, many eyes will be on Mr. Arader, the book dealer and a likely bidder. A bullish man with clear-framed glasses, Mr. Arader has ruffled some rare-book dealers with his brash style, but his name is also the first many mention when it comes to the sale of "Birds of America." One of the country's foremost Audubon dealers, he has sold thousands of Audubon prints in the past. Last month, bounding through his Upper East Side gallery in gym shorts, Mr. Arader said the new set was far too expensive for him to purchase.
After viewing the book while it was briefly in New York, he says, that has changed. This set's vibrant color quality convinced him to jump in. He says that he's ready to spend $8 million to $10 million, in hopes of selling the set at least a decade later at what he estimates would be a 400% return.
"It's just really, really gotten to me," he says of the book. "I just can't sleep at night."
The purchase could carry risks. Mr. Arader bought a set of "Birds of America" in 1979 for $900,000 and spent three years unsuccessfully trying to sell it. He eventually broke up the book and sold it plate by plate—a move that fueled criticism of him in the rare-book world. "I did a wicked thing," he says.
He vows not to repeat the practice if he gets this set. "I would absolutely, positively keep it together as a treasure," he says.
But Mr. Arader could be outbid by a hedge-fund billionaire with a taste for status symbols. "If you're a manly man, you get your trophy wife, you get your Falcon 50, your home on the water in Greenwich," he says, "and you get your complete set."
Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com
Photos: Audubon's Rare Birds
View Slideshow
[SB10001424052748703572404575634662264953350]
Next month, a well-preserved original edition of the book is set to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London, and high-profile book collectors are circling the prey. Speculation about potential top bidders is swirling around a handful of hedge-fund managers, a retail heiress, a prominent rare-book dealer and a number of wealthy Russian and Japanese collectors. Sotheby's has valued the book at about $6.2 million to $9.3 million, making it one of the most expensive books ever sold at auction.
The work arrived in New York from London late last month, the four volumes each fastened with double locks, covered in blankets and bubble-wrap and secured inside a crate. Sotheby's opened a hushed room on the ninth floor of its New York headquarters during the auction house's off hours so several secretive collectors could enjoy a private viewing.
View Full Image
COVER_MAIN1
Illustration by JT Morrow
COVER_MAIN1
COVER_MAIN1
"It's good, very good," murmured Joel Oppenheimer, a dealer from Chicago, as he turned the pages on a recent morning during general viewing hours, his blue eyes scanning each of the book's 435 life-size bird illustrations from top to bottom. He spent two hours bent over the roughly 170-year-old volumes, running a finger over a mended tear under the canvasback duck and staring into the beady red eye of the hairy-necked Californian vulture.
When Sotheby's puts the book, Lot 50, up for sale on Dec. 7, auction executives will be holding their breath. An original copy of "Birds of America"—like a Picasso, a Warhol or a Fabergé egg—has long been seen as a critical trophy for a serious art collector. After record-breaking sales of work by artists Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and other marquee names this fall, a blockbuster price for "Birds" would further signal that art-world trophy hunters are out in force again and bidding aggressively.
The book's value is a function of its scarcity, its beauty and its significance to the field of natural history. The high-water mark for "Birds" came in 2000, when a bound set sold at Christie's for a record $8.8 million to a buyer identified by rare-book experts as Sheikh Saoud Bin Mohammad Bin Ali Al-Thani of Qatar, after a bidding war. More recently, sales of the book have been shakier. In the last year or so, two other copies have been shopped around privately, dealers say, but at least one of them did not sell because it was considered too expensive, priced at roughly $10 million. In 2005, an unbound original edition of the book sold at auction for $5.6 million, below Christie's high estimate of $7 million—a modest result due partly to what dealers call the book's flawed condition.
Prize Pages
Notable sales of manuscripts and rare books
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Alamy
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
Gospels of Henry the Lion, a 12th-century illuminated manuscript created by a Benedictine monk, sold for $11.3 million at Sotheby's in London in 1983. A group of buyers led by the German government acquired the manuscript, which is kept at Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Everett Collection
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
In October, a first edition of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" (a scene from the movie adaptation is pictured) sold at Sotheby's for $258,164, a record for the book at auction. The 1847 book about love and madness on the moors, which was issued in a set with Anne Brontë's "Agnes Grey," features marbled covers with gilt decoration on the spines.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Corbis
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
If a Gutenberg Bible were to come up for sale today, it would likely demolish all previous records for sales of rare books. The first significant book printed with moveable type, completed by roughly 1455 in Mainz, Germany, it has been sold on rare occasions before. In 1978, for instance, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin purchased a Gutenberg Bible at a private sale for $2.4 million.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Corbis
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
The Codex Leicester, an early-16th-century scientific manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci, sold for $30.8 million to Bill Gates in 1994. Mr. Gates has said he purchased the work after a long-held fascination with the Renaissance artist, who mused in the work about subjects as diverse as the moon's glow, fossils and the properties of water.
View Full Image
BIRDSIDE
Alamy
BIRDSIDE
BIRDSIDE
In 2006, a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare's 36 plays, sold for $5.2 million at Sotheby's. The 17th-century book, hailed as one of the finest copies to sell at auction, was purchased by a London book dealer. Another copy is coming up for auction at Sotheby's in London next month, estimated at between $1.6 million and $2.3 million.
Sotheby's is now trying to reset a high price for the book, and it's not taking any chances. A team of roughly a dozen experts has been doing advance work for the past two months. The auction house decided to display the book in New York at the height of the fall auction season, when the building was already teeming with art collectors. Sotheby's invited 20 serious potential bidders to a private luncheon and a cocktail reception in New York (chicken and duck were excluded from the menu, as is the practice at Sotheby's events for ornithological work). Last month in London, about 20 people, including some Americans, viewed the book privately, and more are expected to do so in the coming days.
David Goldthorpe, the London-based Sotheby's rare-book expert who is running this sale, accompanied the book to New York late last month, carrying a key to each double-locked volume in his briefcase. Moments after Sotheby's announced the book's sale in early September, he was on the phone, running through what he calls "a significant list of top clients" whose profiles he keeps on his computer. The next morning, glossy pamphlets landed on the doormats of at least 500 collectors around the world.
When asked for names of people who already possess original sets, Mr. Goldthorpe replied, "The Queen."
Adding to the intrigue: In recent days, Christie's quietly unveiled its own complete set of "Birds of America" in London, offering collectors a sneak peak ahead of its anticipated sale in January 2012 in New York. Collectors in London for the Sotheby's auction can stop by and see the Christie's set, which was owned by the fourth Duke of Portland and remained until now at the family's country estate in England. Christie's is valuing its set at roughly the same amount as the Sotheby's volumes.
Mr. Audubon painted the illustrations of "Birds of America" between 1827 and 1838. An avid hunter and taxidermist, he shot the birds and stuffed them, stringing them through with wires and positioning them in lifelike poses for his watercolors. The images were then printed on copperplate and colored by hand in London under the supervision of Robert Havell Jr., who engraved many of the book's plates. The engravings were originally sold unbound, a collection of five plates shipped to subscribers every month over more than a decade. At the time, a complete set cost roughly $800—or about $19,000 today.
Currently, only 11 of the roughly 200 original "Birds of America" sets are in private hands. About 100 belong to institutions. The rest have been destroyed, lost, or broken up and sold as individual prints. Rumored private owners include Texas oil-industry billionaire Lee Bass, the family of late publishing billionaire William Ziff Jr. and retired Atlanta real-estate developer Tom Cousins. Mr. Bass and the Ziff family declined to comment through representatives; Mr. Cousins couldn't be reached for comment.
As the Sotheby's auction approaches, art-world speculation about potential bidders has bubbled up around several candidates. One oft-cited possibility: Alice Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress. For the last six years, she has been aggressively acquiring Americana for her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, set to open next fall in Bentonville, Ark. The Walton Family Foundation already bought another American masterpiece for the museum: "Kindred Spirits," an 1849 landscape by Asher B. Durand, for more than $35 million in 2005. She is not believed to have acquired the book to date.
New York-based rare-book and print dealer Graham Arader calls Ms. Walton a "two-ton gorilla" in the collecting of Americana right now and said the book would be a draw for visitors to her museum. Crystal Bridges Deputy Director Sandra Edwards says two "Birds of America" sets, neither of them the Sotheby's copy, were brought to the attention of the museum's curator in the past year. "The professional staff considered these and chose not to pursue," she said in a statement. "Anything beyond that is pure speculation."
Another candidate: Paul Tudor Jones, the Greenwich, Conn., hedge-fund manager. Mr. Jones bought the less pristine "Birds" at Christie's in 2005, according to people familiar with the sale. That copy, which belonged to the Providence Athenaeum in Rhode Island, was what one Audubon expert called "a ghastly train wreck" that had been poorly restored twice. Still, it sold within five minutes. Mr. Jones declined to comment.
One person familiar with the auction identifies a possible bidder as Richard Chilton Jr., a 52-year-old hedge-fund executive from Connecticut with a taste for sporting artwork, 18th-century American furniture and 19th-century American paintings. He also is known to possess a large collection of Audubon prints already. Mr. Chilton declined to comment.
$30.8 million
Amount Bill Gates paid for the Codex Leicester in 1994.
Dealers also are keeping an eye on Russian collectors, who have helped push art prices higher in recent years, and Japanese collectors, who in the past have shown an interest in rare books. Of course, a surprise bidder could always emerge—or the book could fail to sell or fall short of the price Sotheby's is hoping for.
In the 1980s, it was fairly common practice to break up sets and sell the pages as individual prints. Those engravings can now fetch from $2,000 to more than $200,000, depending on the plate's condition and the popularity of the bird in the picture. But as complete sets became rarer, their value rose. The book is no longer broken up because it can fetch about twice as much whole as in pieces. Besides, breaking up books is now viewed with distaste by the book-collecting community.
The set for sale next month, which art dealers have called beautifully preserved, comes from the estate of the late Lord Hesketh, who died 55 years ago after helping compile an all-star collection of rare books and prints. The auction is a sale of the nobleman's collection, with "Birds of America" coming up after a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio (estimated to sell for between $1.6 million and $2.3 million).
If the recent sale of individual Audubon prints is any guide, the book could fetch a high price, appealing to book connoisseurs, art collectors and nature lovers. Last year, when the art market was still sluggish, Audubon prints comprised two of the three top sales at a Christie's auction of American furniture, folk art and prints. At a rare-book auction at Sotheby's last month, first editions of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" realized the highest prices ever for those works at auction, according to Sotheby's. "Pride and Prejudice" sold for $220,210.
View Full Image
COVER_JUMP1
Ofer Wolberger for The Wall Street Journal
'Birds of America' on display at Sotheby's in New York. Each volume measures about 4½ feet across when open.
COVER_JUMP1
COVER_JUMP1
Other manuscripts have sold for more money (the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific observations and drawings by Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, went for $30.8 million to Bill Gates in 1994), but those works are not printed books.
At least one other "Birds of America" might come on the market soon. The National Audubon Society has loaned an original set to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries in Washington for more than 10 years. Last winter, Audubon officials mentioned to the director of the Libraries, Nancy Gwinn, that the Society might be interested in selling its set privately, Ms. Gwinn says. A former Audubon board member confirmed the possible sale. The Society did not respond to requests for comment.
At the London sale next month, many eyes will be on Mr. Arader, the book dealer and a likely bidder. A bullish man with clear-framed glasses, Mr. Arader has ruffled some rare-book dealers with his brash style, but his name is also the first many mention when it comes to the sale of "Birds of America." One of the country's foremost Audubon dealers, he has sold thousands of Audubon prints in the past. Last month, bounding through his Upper East Side gallery in gym shorts, Mr. Arader said the new set was far too expensive for him to purchase.
After viewing the book while it was briefly in New York, he says, that has changed. This set's vibrant color quality convinced him to jump in. He says that he's ready to spend $8 million to $10 million, in hopes of selling the set at least a decade later at what he estimates would be a 400% return.
"It's just really, really gotten to me," he says of the book. "I just can't sleep at night."
The purchase could carry risks. Mr. Arader bought a set of "Birds of America" in 1979 for $900,000 and spent three years unsuccessfully trying to sell it. He eventually broke up the book and sold it plate by plate—a move that fueled criticism of him in the rare-book world. "I did a wicked thing," he says.
He vows not to repeat the practice if he gets this set. "I would absolutely, positively keep it together as a treasure," he says.
But Mr. Arader could be outbid by a hedge-fund billionaire with a taste for status symbols. "If you're a manly man, you get your trophy wife, you get your Falcon 50, your home on the water in Greenwich," he says, "and you get your complete set."
Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com
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