Christie's is selling works from the Western art collection of Ted Turner, the media mogul who died earlier this year at 87, ARTnews reports. According to CNN, the works are valued at around $20 million, with the auction set for January 20 in New York.

The paintings lined the log walls of Turner's sprawling Flying D Ranch near Bozeman, Montana, including Alfred Bierstadt's *Yosemite Valley* (1866), which long hung over his stone fireplace, and two Thomas Moran landscapes depicting the Grand Canyon.

Proceeds will go to the Turner Foundation, whose mission is to protect and restore the natural systems on which all life depends.

American Western art is often considered a fraught genre, tending to place settlers, cowboys, and explorers front and center in a laudatory way — scrutiny that has seemed especially pointed this year on the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Yet as ARTnews notes, any scrutiny over Western art's themes has apparently not impacted sales. Christie's head of American art Tylee Abbott attributed the strength to a committed group of Western-based collectors plus coastal clients acquiring homes in the West.

The surprise is that the sale follows a record: ARTnews reports the January Koch sale, pegged at $50 million, brought more than $84 million with premiums and now holds the record for a single-owner sale of American Western art.

The sale is headlined by Bierstadt's *Yosemite Valley* (1866), a placid vision of a tree-lined lake under a blue sky, carrying a $6 million high estimate — the same figure it had when Turner bought it at Sotheby's in 2003, ARTnews reports.

Bierstadt's auction record, set in 2008, stands at $7.3 million. The more expensive of two Thomas Moran Grand Canyon landscapes, *The Inner Gorge, Grand Canyon*, also carries a $6 million high estimate, against Moran's 2008 record of $17.7 million.

According to the Associated Press, other works include images of Oregon's Mount Jefferson and a Bierstadt titled *Buffalo at Sunset*, showing bison near a pool of water reflecting a glaring sun.

Turner's son Teddy told the Associated Press that his father saw perfection in these paintings — versions of a bygone West not yet marred by human industry — mirroring his aspirations for his 178-square-mile Montana ranch, where bison herds now number some 45,000 across his properties according to Ted Turner Enterprises.

'These paintings meant a great deal to our dad, not only because of their beauty, but because they reflected so much of what he loved about nature and the outdoors,' the Turner family said in a statement quoted by ARTnews.

The foundation proceeds tie the sale directly to preserving natural habitats and restoring species like the bison that graze the ranch.

The Associated Press reports the auction is due January 20 at Christie's in New York, with proceeds funding the Turner Foundation's work across large landscapes.

Teddy Turner told the AP he would have liked to keep looking at the art for the rest of his life, 'but that was not his plan,' admitting it is 'hard to replace a Bierstadt over the mantel.'

Christie's Abbott, in a statement cited by ARTnews, said the collection's quality and depth, with proceeds benefiting Turner's foundation, 'takes on even further meaning' and 'will surely resonate with today's great interest in the American West.'