ART

A family trust headed by Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) sold an artwork for what observers say is a record price for an American painting. The 1846 work hangs in Washington’s National Gallery of Art. The gallery’s deputy director confirmed a report in the Maine Antique Digest that George Caleb Bingham’s “The Jolly Flatboatmen” was sold last month to Richard Manoogian, a Detroit art collector and chairman of Masco Corp. and Masco Industries. The antique journal said the painting was sold for $6 million, surpassing the record $4.07 million paid by the National Gallery in December, 1985, for Rembrandt Peale’s “Rubens Peale with a Geranium.” Manoogian has agreed to leave the Bingham painting with the National Gallery “on a regular, if not indefinite basis,” the museum said.