NEW ORLEANS, LA. — A highlight of Neal Auction Company’s June 27 and 28 summer estates auction was a 6½-by-12½-inch oil painting of “The Cove at Ponce Park [Florida]” by William Aiken Walker (South Carolina,1838-1921), from the Baton Rouge collection of D. Benjamin Kleinpeter. Estimated at $15/25,000, the work sold for a near-record at $152,362, including the buyer’s premium, to a Florida telephone bidder competing against seven active telephones and the salesroom floor.

Walker, the Charleston, S.C., artist who for over 50 years traveled the South painting landscapes, rural genre scenes and black character studies, documented an extensive record of black life of the period. The work sold at Neal’s was a rare Florida scene, which beautifully incorporated figures into a class of Florida pictures that usually has none. The bidding was aggressive, with eight telephone bidders vying for the painting against activity from the floor.

See a full report of the auction in next week’s Antiques and the Arts Weekly.