Andrew Wyeth Paintings Belonging to Screen Legend Charlton Heston are Up for Auction

Three Andrew Wyeth paintings that once belonged to Hollywood legend Charlton Heston will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s in Los Angeles on November 18, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Heston, who starred in films like The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, The Agony and the Ecstasy, and Planet of the Apes, was both a fan and personal friend of Wyeth, a realist painter who was one of the best-known artists of his generation. Heston later went on to narrate a documentary about the artist, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures.

Heston died in 2008 at 84; Wyeth passed away a year later, at 91.

Charlton Heston.
Photo: Wikipedia.

The pieces to be auctioned are the 1986 painting Flood Plain, estimated at up to $3 million; Ice Pool, a watercolor estimated at as much as $250,000; and Study For Flood Plain, which he gifted to Heston in 1991. The paintings will be on display at Sotheby’s prior to the sale.

The record for a Wyeth work was set in 2007 at Christie’s, when Ericksons, a 1973 portrait of the artist’s neighbor and frequent subject, sold for over $10.3 million. Several other Wyeth paintings have sold for between $2–$6 million, according to the artnet Price Database.