Auction introduction: American Sublime: Property from an Important Private Collection is a single-owner auction comprised of masterworks by the most important artists in American history, from Thomas Cole to Childe Hassam. Leading the sale is Cole’s Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire of 1827, a painting that represents the pinnacle of achievement in Hudson River School painting and exemplifies the uniting quality throughout this magnificent collection: the sublime. Through the paintings of sweeping, rugged landscapes and remarkable luminist skies, this finely curated sale memorialises American artistic ideals of the sublime, glorious and transcendental over a 100-year pictorial history. Among other key highlights of the auction is Winslow Homer’s Boy with Blue Dory, a masterful example in watercolour by America’s preeminent painter of 19th-century American life. Other rare and exceptional works include Raphaelle Peale’s Still Life with Raisin Cake, Martin Johnson Heade’s breathtaking River at Twilight and Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Civil War-era nocturne Camping for the Night on Mount. The collection also boasts striking examples of Impressionism by leading artists William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam and more. Speaking to the extraordinary quality throughout, many of these works feature distinguished ownership history, from some of the most noteworthy institutional and private collections in the field, including the National Academy of Design, International Business Machines (IBM), 19th-century conservation leader Gifford Pinchot, the renowned Vanderbilt Family and the well-known Manoogian Collection of Michigan. The preview exhibition will begin on 17 January at Rockefeller Center, alongside 19th Century American and Western Art.