The final sale of the Joseph Harrison Jr. collection took place in Philadelphia on March 12, 1912, after an earlier postponement. The sale centered on major American paintings and sculptures from one of Philadelphia's most ambitious nineteenth-century private collections. Its star lot was Gilbert Stuart's 1795 Vaughn portrait of George Washington, bought by New York dealer Thomas B. Clarke for $16,100, described as a record auction price for an American painting. The sale then took an unusual turn: once enough money had been raised to satisfy the estate's bequests, an executor stopped the auction and announced that the remaining works would go to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
The sale both reset the market for American painting and preserved important Harrison works for Philadelphia.
