A truly iconic item of American folk art wowed would be bidders at Christie’s in New York when one of the most beautiful portraits ever completed by American painter Ammi Phillips (1788-1865) went under the gavel. Universally known as Girl in a Red Dress with a Dog, the work, with its powerful central image of a young girl clad in a vivid red gown gazing steadfastly out of the canvas, fetched a staggering US$1.69 million, vastly exceeding its pre-sale estimate.
The size of the winning bid is all the more spectacular given that Phillips was all but forgotten after his death. Even though a number of his works came to be widely appreciated in the early ’20s, they were not correctly attributed to him until 1958, when Mary Black, a renowned art historian, finally secured him the recognition that had long eluded him.
Part of his much-admired four-piece Children in Red series – a set of works that includes Girl in a Red Dress with Cat and Dog, his most celebrated portrait – the recent sale did indeed offer ‘a rare chance to acquire an undisputed masterpiece of American folk art’.