Auction Sale in Clinton Hall, New York, 1876

Escosura, a Spanish-born, Paris-based genre painter, arrived in the United States in autumn 1876 to see the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and to work in New York for a few months. His ambitious canvas represents a sale of objets d’art at Clinton Hall, once located at 13 Astor Place, though it is not possible to identify the specific auction. Escosura, himself a voracious collector, introduced multiple narrative threads—from the bewhiskered auctioneers in the rostrum to a fashionably-dressed clientele clutching printed catalogues to the sleeping man in the lower right corner. The artist exhibited the painting in the prestigious Paris Salon of 1877, and later presented it to The Met, a gift brokered by art dealer and long-time trustee Samuel P. Avery.