Sanford Robinson Gifford’s “Study of the Parthenon,” an 1869 oil on canvas, bested its $20/30,000 estimate to attain $269,000.

NEW YORK CITY — Swann Galleries’ June 9 American art sale totaled just $1.08 million, including the buyer’s premium.

The sale was headlined by an intense bidding battle over the phone for the previously unrecorded Gifford painting, “Study of the Parthenon,” 1869. The study — which relates to a painting of the same subject, “Ruins of the Parthenon,” held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. — sold for $269,000.

Todd Weyman, Swann Galleries’ Vice President and Director of Prints & Drawings said, “We are enjoying seeing the market for this annual sale grow, with almost 20 percent of the sold lots exceeding their high estimates, and competitive bidding for top lots including works by Sanford Robinson Gifford, Steve Wheeler, Miguel Covarrubias and other artists from a wide range of schools and genres.”

Abstract works were also popular among collectors in this sale, with Robert Barrell’s first piece to come to auction, the oil painting “Cat and Bird,” soaring over estimate to $23,750. Fellow Indian Space Painter Steve Wheeler’s bright “The Halogens II” also eclipsed its high estimate at $65,000.

Records were set by Elsie Driggs’s “Figures Fighting (The Mob),” at $11,250, more than five times the previous auction record for the artist, and Gabor Peterdi’s “Pacific I J-VII-89,” a 1989 oil on canvas, which set a new record for the artist at auction at $8,450.

For general information, www.swanngalleries.com or 212-254-4710.