Wednesday Auction Report
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#11 Auctions wk end Oct. 17 RBH Oct. 20, 2025 wailukusue@gmail.com
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#11 THE WEEK THAT WAS AT THE AUCTIONS ending Oct. 17, 2025
By Hammer_Price
Free Link https://www.rarebookhub.com/auction_updates/1008
(Note to reader: The summary link above is FREE, the additional links below will function only for RBH subscribers. Results priced in $ £ € )
Ninety-one auctions were archived by Rare Book Hub For the week ended Oct. 17. Turnover was $47,128,357. The average lot brought $2,728.
The week brought a strong showing for photography especially at the Christie’s Photography sale. Top lot of the week was a 1494 Columbus letter which sold at Christie’s Fine Printed Books and Manuscript sale for $1,651,000 on Oct. 16. (Scroll down for more details on this item.) Christies also dominated many of the items we liked.
Eight auctions saw their total proceeds reach a million dollars:
Heritage Auctions. GACC US Currency Signature Auction on October 10th: $11,629,098
Christie’s. Spellbound: The Hegewisch Collection, Part I on October 16th: $6,472,246
Christie’s. Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana on October 16th: $5,403,342
Christie’s. Photographs on October 10th: $3,591,814
Heritage Auctions. World Paper Money Signature Auction on October 16th: $2,083,801
Rago Arts and Auctions. Prints and Multiples on October 15th: $1,756,944
Swann Galleries. Fine Photographs on October 16th: $1,507,634
Propstore. Collectible Posters Live Auction - Day 1 - Los Angeles Fall 2025 on October 10th: $1,047,501
Some highlights from the week: The majority of the text in the notes is taken directly from the individual auction catalogs, with an occasional comment added for RBH readers.
Our mystery lot of the week was Victor Hugo estimated at €5,000 and sold for €182,000
These are our other highlights:
Goya complete set of Caprichios
Seven hand drawn Gettysburg maps by Gen. Abner Doubleday
Gordon Parks photo American Gothic
NickBrandt’s Cheetah photo up $20K from last sale a very short time
2 important Frederick Douglass items - one at Christie's, one at Fleischer’s
Columbus letter 1494- top lot of the week
Steve McCurry children portfolio 2010 - 10 images
Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius,Venice 1610
Albrecht Durer engraving 1513 Knight Death and the Devil
1930 Hell’s Angel color 3-sheet movie poster Jean Harlow/Howard Hughes producer,
De animalibus, Aristotle, 1st biology text,1476, Venice
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1. Goya complete set of Los Caprichos, Madrid 1799 sold for £190,500 ($256,089) atChristie’s on Oct. 16.
Francisco de Goya Y Lucientes (1746-1828) Los Caprichos the complete set of eighty etchings with burnished aquatint, drypoint and engraving 1797-98 on laid paper, without watermark a fine, uniform set from the First Edition published by the artist, Madrid, 1799, in an edition of approximately three hundred copies
very good to fine impressions printed in dark sepia printing sharply, with great contrasts and brightly wiped highlights, with the scratch on plate 45
the sheets loose, with wide margins
some minor foxing, otherwise in very good condition Plates 21,4 x 15,2 cm. (8 1/2 x 6 in.) (and similar)Sheets 28,8 x 19,3 cm. (11 1/3 x 7 2/3 in.) (and similar)(80).
Acquired from Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, circa 1990-95; then by descent to the present owners.
….Goya, with increasing success as a court painter in Madrid, moved in progressive circles and his friends and patrons included the most prominent intellectuals and politicians of the Spanish Enlightenment. From this elevated viewpoint, Spain must have seemed a rather schizophrenic place, under strain but not yet torn between an idealistic and cosmopolitan elite on one side, and a people mired in ancient traditions of privilege and servitude, faith and superstition, corruption and violence on the other.
…On 6 February 1799, Goya placed an advertisement on the front page of the Diario de Madrid, to announce the publication of Los Caprichos: 'A collection of prints of fantasy subjects, invented and etched by Don Francisco Goya. The author, persuaded that the correction of human vices and errors (although seemingly the province of eloquence and poetry) can also be the goal of painting; has chosen as subjects appropriate for his work, from among the innumerable eccentricities and errors common to all civil society, and from the concerns and vulgar deceptions allowed by custom, ignorance or personal gain, those that he believed most apt to furnish material for ridicule and at the same time, stimulate the fantasy of the artist.' (translated by J. A. Tomlinson in: Order and Disorder, p. 347)
With Los Caprichos, Goya for the first time made his visions of the more sinister side of Spanish society - and the human soul in general - accessible to a wider audience, beyond his small group of friends and patrons. It was an enormous undertaking, prepared over several years and based on hundreds of drawings: eighty etchings with aquatint, printed in an edition of three hundred. At the time, it was the largest series of prints ever conceived by a single artist. For sale at a small liquor and perfume store on the street where Goya lived, only some thirty sets of this first and only lifetime edition were sold. In 1803, the artist gave the plates and the remaining impressions to the King, in exchange for an allowance for his son Javier - and presumably to escape the wrath of the Inquisition.
…….Wickedly satirical and subversive as the Caprichos are in their imagery and content, they also represent a technical revolution. Having previously created a number of competent yet ultimately conventional etchings after Velazquez, Goya in this series suddenly and completely mastered the aquatint method. In particular through his use of blank paper for glowing highlights among dense shades of grey and black, he created images of dramatic and disturbing beauty.
What makes Los Caprichos however one of the greatest unified series of images ever produced, is not just his baffling draughtsmanship or his technical mastery, nor his sharp satirical wit, but the intensity of his imagination and the depth of his humanity.
Hammer_ Price comments: A fabulous series at any price. More commentary in catalog notes.
2. VICTOR HUGO ODD LOT sold for €182,000 ($212,116) 
at OENAT, France on Oct 15. Huge up swing from pre-sale
estimate of €4,000 - 5,000 This lot was #23 of the week’s
top 25 lots. Why?? Our sources tell us the word “envoi”
translated below as “dispatches” means “author inscriptions”
in this context. He says the real question is
why the auction house did not emphasize it?
HUGO (Victor). Set of 18 works bound in 19 in-8 volumes, including 16 with dispatches; faded and rubbed mismatched bindings with snags to headpieces, some boards detached, occasional heavy foxing, some dispatch leaves folded (several contemporary bindings, others old).
Various editions published between 1829 and 1859.
3. If you’re going to spend money on an Albrecht Durer
prints this is the one to have: 1513, Knight, Death and
the Devil engraving sold for £304,800 ($409,743) at
Christie’s on Oct 16.
ALBRECHT DURER (1471-1528)
on laid paper, without watermark
a fine, bright and silvery impression, Meder a-b
printing sharply, with great clarity, luminous contrasts and depth
trimmed to or just outside the subject
the left sheet edge very skillfully made up, a few other minor
repairs, generally in good condition. Sheet 24,5 x 18,7 cm. (9 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.)Unidentified, initials GE (...) in pencil verso (not in Lugt).
Karl & Faber, Munich, 29 May 1991, lot 45.Acquired at that sale; then by descent to the present owners.
Countless attempts have been made to identify the central figure, which Durer simply referred to as der Reuther ('the rider'). Suggestions have included emperor, pope, heretic, Germanic hero and local patrician. None of the potential candidates, either historical or mythological, have been substantiated. The knight as robber baron - a genuine threat in the days of Durer - is also lacking visual evidence. The precursors of Durer's rider are the two great equestrian statues of the Italian 15th century, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Colleoni in Venice, both of which Durer had seen, and - much closer to home - the Rider of Bamberg Cathedral. Whatever his true identity, Durer's rider is clearly cast in the heroic mould, a model of courage and moral strength, the Christian Knight, who does not fear Death or the Devil.
Impressions of this print can vary greatly, not just in quality, but also in character. Fine, early impressions can be dark and brooding, almost nocturnal, or luminous and silvery, suggestive of a cold winter day, such as the present example, which adds to the desolation of the scene.
With this print of 1513, one of the three engravings that later came to be known as the Meisterstiche (see also lot 334), Durer had reached the height of his virtuosity as a printmaker. The variety of marks he employed to describe a multitude of different textures and surfaces - from the hard, cold metal of the helmet, to the sheen of the horse's coat, the coarser fur of the dog, the splintered wood of the tree stump, the roots and grass on the crumbly rock, and so much more - is a delight to observe; despite or perhaps because of the ghastly subject. Additional commentary in catalog notes.
https://rarebookhub.com/auction_lot_books/9267937?key=546311a573439ff8cd07fb970b16d917286bba76
![<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/acf970a0-a15d-4c79-aa24-5e8e414cb465.png "<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.")
