Ted Turner's $20 Million Western Art Collection Heads to Christie's

Christie's will sell works from Ted Turner's Western art collection, valued at around $20 million according to CNN. Turner, the media mogul who died earlier this year at 87, built a collection anchored by 19th-century landscapes of the American West.

The sale's headline lot is an Albert Bierstadt landscape that hung above a fireplace in Turner's Montana ranch for years. The painting, titled Yosemite Valley (1866), depicts a placid, tree-lined lake under a blue sky. There are no people in it — a composition that suggests untouched land, free for the taking, even though Native Americans lived there.

Turner bought the Bierstadt at Sotheby's in 2003, when it carried a $6 million high estimate and was considered one of the most significant Bierstadt works to reach auction in two decades. This time it carries the same $6 million high estimate. Bierstadt's current auction record, set in 2008, stands at $7.3 million.

What else is in the sale?

Two Thomas Moran landscapes depicting the Grand Canyon also come to auction. The pricier of the two, The Inner Gorge, Grand Canyon, carries a $6 million high estimate. Moran's auction record, also set in 2008, is $17.7 million.

"These paintings meant a great deal to our dad, not only because of their beauty, but because they reflected so much of what he loved about nature and the outdoors," the Turner family said in a statement. "While it's difficult to part with pieces that were so dear to him, our family takes comfort in knowing they will be appreciated and cherished by others."

The proceeds will go to the Turner Foundation, whose stated mission is to "protect and restore the natural systems—air, land, and water—on which all life depends."

Why a $20 million sale matters

Here's the practical question: what does this change for the Western art market? Potentially a lot, because the category keeps outperforming its estimates. In January, Christie's sold a tranche of Western art from the holdings of William Koch — pegged at $50 million ahead of the sale — for more than $84 million with premiums counted in. According to Christie's, that sale now holds the record for a single-owner sale of American Western art.

By that measure, the Turner collection could prove an unlikely hit. Its $20 million valuation sits far below the Koch results, but the same dynamics — a committed collector base plus new coastal money — apply.

"It's an honor to share this amazing collection with the world," Tylee Abbott, Christie's head of American art, said in a statement. "The quality and depth is remarkable, with exceptional paintings by Bierstadt and Moran representing the country's lasting love of the American landscape. In the context of Mr. Turner's collection, with the proceeds benefiting his foundation, this takes on even further meaning and will surely resonate with today's great interest in the American West."

A fraught genre that still sells

Western art is often considered a fraught genre. It tends to place settlers, cowboys and explorers front and center, frequently in a laudatory way. The genre has looked especially fraught this year, on the 250th anniversary of the United States, as institutions across the nation revisited American history — sometimes with a critical eye.

Any scrutiny over its themes and images, however, seems not to have dented sales.

"There has long been a very committed group collecting Western art, many of them based in the West," Abbott told ARTnews earlier this year. "In the last couple of decades there has been an upswell of interest in American art through a combination of bidders based in the West and coastal clients acquiring homes in the West."

That bidder pool gets its next test when the Turner collection crosses the block — a $20 million sale that doubles as a referendum on how far the category's momentum can carry past the Koch benchmark.