Works by Fritz Scholder

Fritz Scholder is the leading figure of contemporary Indigenous art and his paintings, especially those from his Dartmouth Portraits, are the most sought after and highly coveted works of art for collectors of this burgeoning field. Scholder created his Dartmouth Series of portraits in 1973 when he spent that year as an Artist in Residence at Dartmouth College. The works are known for their blending of pop art with abstract expressionism and at the time challenged the romanticized, Hollywood-style stereotypes of indigenous people in popular culture. There are only seventeen paintings in the Dartmouth Portraits and many of them reside in the permanent collection of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

However, up until 2018, the World Auction Record for a Scholder painting was $74,700. Then, in January of 2018, the Scottsdale Art Auction was consigned the entire collection of the Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art. In that collection was Dartmouth Portrait #14 (80 x 68”). The iconic image ended up selling for $222,300 and thus set off a six-figure run on Scholder’s paintings that is still going today. In that same auction, the Scottsdale Art Auction also sold Hollywood Indian #5, 1970, (80 x 68”) for $70,200; Portrait with Pipe, 1995 (80 x 68”) for $64,350; and Cow Kachina #2 (14 x 11”) for $16,380. The Scholder market has never been the same. For example, Indian on Horseback, 1973 (68 x 80”) sold for $500,000 in 2022.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Scottsdale Art Auction’s impact on the Scholder market is that the 2018 sale was not simply an extraordinary afternoon of bidding. It helped establish an entirely new price benchmark for the artist, one that collectors and auction houses would continue to build upon in the years that followed. And Scottsdale Art Auction has remained an important player in that market. In April 2025, the auction house sold Scholder’s Indians and Persian Rug for $222,300 and Buffalo Back for $105,300, demonstrating that the demand for his paintings continues well beyond the rare and monumental Dartmouth Portraits. What makes the story especially compelling is that the 2018 painting carried a high estimate of just $55,000 yet sold for more than four times that amount. In many ways, that sale marked a turning point in the public auction market for Scholder’s work, helping move the artist into an entirely different price category and setting the stage for the record prices that followed.