Christie’s is selling four works by former US President Jimmy Carter this month, all of which carry high estimates under $15,000.
Three of the works are currently part of an online auction titled “The American Collector,” which closes on January 27 at 11am Eastern. Mountain Waterfall (2003) and Steeple (2010) both carried pre-sale estimates of $6,000 to 8,000 each, while an undated work title A Still Life (An Angry Pomegranate) is estimated at $2,000 to $4,000.
All three works are currently subject to active bidding. At press time, Steeple is poised to sell for $24,000 (after 31 bids), Mountain Waterfall for $17,000 (26 bids), and A Still Life for $6,000 (35 Bids).
The fourth work, The Hornet’s Nest (2003), will be offered during a live day sale in New York titled “We the People: America at 250” on January 23. Depicting three Davy Crockett-esque men with rifles drawn in a landscape, the work carries a pre-sale estimate of $8,000 to $12,000.
The four paintings are part of a much larger trove of dozens of personal items from Jimmy Carter, and his wife Rosalynn, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the Carter Family Foundation, which focuses on supporting communities in rural Georgia, the Carters’ home state.
Among those items is handwritten letter from President Carter to Rosalynn on her 51st birthday in 1978, written on White House stationery. Additionally, “The American Collector” sale also features pieces of furniture made by Carter: A Pine Horse Trough Coffee Table and Two Carved Walnut Circular Side Tables both carry estimates of $2,000–$4,000, while An Ashwood Jewelry Chest is estimated at $1,000 to $1,5000.
The four paintings belong to a collection of nearly 100 paintings that Carter made after he left the White House, though he first picked up painting through a mail-order painting class during his service in the US Navy after World War II, his daughter Amy Carter told the New York Times.
“In his daily life, he was constantly thinking about really large problems that he wanted to solve,” Amy Carter told the Times. “None of those things are in his paintings. His paintings seem to be this quiet place of things he loved.”
Carter isn’t the only 20th-century political figure to paint, with former US Presidents George W. Bush and Dwight D. Eisenhower as well as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill all having picked up the brush.
Churchill’s paintings, however, are the only ones with a serious market, with a 1943 canvas once owned by actor and activist Angelina Jolie having sold for $11.6 million in 2021 at a Christie’s London sale. Per the Times report, the low pricing of Carter’s paintings is intentional in order to establish a baseline for his market.
