3 Riveras at Sotheby's. (Published 1984) (2024)

PAULETTE GODDARD acquired three works from Diego Rivera 40 years ago, including a major painting from his flower vendor series of the 1940's. All three of these works will be auctioned next Tuesday at 7 P.M. at Sotheby's, York Avenue at 72d Street.

Inscribed to Miss Goddard, dated 1941 and signed by the Mexican artist, ''Flower Vendor'' is an oil-on-masonite work showing an Indian woman kneeling and holding a huge bunch of calla lilies. The four-foot-square painting is one of the few Riveras in private hands and the most important painting in this sale, according to Sharon L. Schultz, Sotheby's Latin American-art specialist. She says that it may sell for as much as $250,000.

Miss Goddard's two other Riveras up for bidding are ''Young Woman with Sunflowers,'' from 1941 (up to $150,000) and ''Nude Woman,'' inscribed ''To Paulette,'' a charcoal on board from 1943 (up to $35,000). Miss Goddard will retain one Rivera painting that she is said to value more than the others - a portrait of herself.

Paintings from the most important private collection of works by the Cuban Surrealist Wilfredo Lam will also be auctioned by Sotheby's Tuesday. Assembled by Joseph Cantor, the late Indianapolis collector who made his money in motion picture theaters and real estate, the holdings include 15 oils and 11 works on paper. All but two were acquired directly from the artist, and half are in this sale. Mr. Cantor began buying Lams on his first trip to Havana, in 1949. He paid $350 for ''The Four Elements,'' which is expected to bring up to $35,000. The most important Lam work in this sale is ''Water Braids,'' a single-figure painting depicting Lam's favorite theme of woman as the symbol of carnality, is in dark blues, browns and blacks. It may sell for as much as $150,000. Sotheby's will auction the rest of his collection next November.

Cole 'View of Boston' May Sell for $1 Million

''The state of scholarship in American art is still at the beginning,'' Jay E. Cantor, Christie's specialist in this field, said the other day, citing discoveries concerning two paintings in the auction house's sale next Friday at 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. For more than a century, he said, Thomas Cole's ''View of Boston,'' an 1839 work, was misidentified as a painting depicting Albany. In 1969, the mistake was corrected when Howard Merritt, a Cole expert at the University of Rochester, was researching the work in preparation for a Cole show at the university's Memorial Art Gallery. The painting, showing Cole's sophisticated handling of vistas and light, is expected to sell for about $1 million.

Even more surprising, he said, is the recent discovery of the previously unknown ''For the Track,'' a major 1895 trompe l'oeil painting by John Frederick Peto, which fools the eye by its realistic depiction of a jockey's cap, riding crop, horseshoe and the weathered wall on which they hang. The painting, owned for years by the daughter of the man who purchased it from Peto - neither father nor daughter have been identified - was unknown to John Wilmerding when he prepared last year's show of Peto's work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. ''It is amazing that a painting of the quality of the Peto could be totally unknown to experts until now,'' Mr. Cantor said, adding that he expected that it might sell for as much as $500,000.