ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Virginia Museum deaccessions and the collection of Dudley and Constance Godfrey led Brunk Auctions’ September 10-11 sale with a landscape by Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, 1823-1900) bringing top lot honors. The painting led a strong selection of Hudson River school paintings that attracted private collectors, dealers and institutions. “Autumn Landscape with Cattle,” signed and dated 1879, measured 22½ by 39 inches and was being deaccessioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Among its noteworthy provenance was an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, Conn.), and at the American Embassy in Berne, Switzerland. It appears in Cropsey’s catalogue raisonné, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser’s American Paintings before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum, as well as a 1976 volume published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society titled The American Years.

Estimated at $80/120,000, it finished at $196,800 to a bidder on the phone.

Prices quoted include buyer’s premium; a more extensive sale recap will appear in a future issue.