Collections

Featured Collection

A successful artist with a decades-long career painting rich scenes of the circuses he fell in love with as a boy in Peru, Indiana, Robert Edward Weaver (1913-1991) drew praise from the likes of Edward Hopper, Mahonri Young, and Gifford Beal, to say nothing of the critical acclaim he received from the general public in-period and the collecting world to this day.

Less well-known, however, is Weaver’s work on another subject he was very passionate about: auto racing. With a healthy love of both dirt-track racing and the Indianapolis 500, Weaver created dozens of works in various media, and was known to spend long stretches of time at the track while working as Professor Emeritus at the Herron School of Art, often bringing students out to capture the cars in motion. His relationship with both institutions, and Tony Hulman in particular, was integral to the establishment of scholarship opportunities for students at the Herron School to pursue studies in art and advertising.

Only a select few of his works on automotive subjects ever left Weaver’s personal collection, and today grace both private boxes at the Brickyard and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. Only a handful of his automotive pieces are currently held in private collections. Because of this, we are especially honored to announce that we will be arranging the sale of over 50 pieces of automotive art from Weaver’s estate, ranging from musings and studies to fully-realized sketches and paintings in a variety of sizes and formats.

The themes captured in these works can be broadly characterized as early Indy 500 scenes and dirt track racing, but the devil is in the details: everything from action-packed racing scenes to portraits of drivers can be found in this collection, in addition to design sketches for a “half-midget” racer, extensive plans for a comic book that never came to fruition, and studies for a Saturday Evening Post collection that did.

And so, with great excitement, I’d like to invite you to browse the available works, and keep an eye out for further updates on our upcoming gallery event. Please reach out to us with any inquiries about the availability of these pieces (or the many others in the collection not pictured here), or if you have any other questions or concerns!