So French, So Opulent, So Up for Auction
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The gallery space at Sotheby’s has hosted exhibits of every sort, but none quite as opulent as the vignettes of European furniture, paintings, and Asian art currently on display. The objects come from the collection of the Paris-based antiques dealer Ariane Dandois, who in July shuttered her gallery on the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. Sotheby’s will auction off the nearly 800 pieces of furniture and decorative objects on Thursday and Friday.
This collection was built during the 34 years Ms. Dandois established herself as one of the world’s foremost antiques dealers. According to the senior vice president of English and European furniture at Sotheby’s, Alistair Clarke, Ms. Dandois is famous for her broad, eclectic taste — which also makes the auction unusually diverse in time period and provenance. Highlights range from an Empire mahogany and gilt-bronze secretaire once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte, estimated at between $250,000 and $350,000, to a early 19th-century cut-glass candelabrum — estimated at between $40,000 and $60,000 — attributed to Ivan Dipner, who supplied bronzes for the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. A pair of English painted oak settees designed by William Kent, circa 1740, is valued between $150,000 and $250,000 each, while a pair of Japanese six-fold screens from the Edo period is estimated at between $70,000 and $100,0000.
Ms. Dandois, descended from Russian Imperialists and a mix of Europeans, studied at the Louvre before opening her first gallery in Paris in 1973. Specializing in Oriental art, Ms. Dandois organized exhibitions of Ming furniture and Indian sculpture that attracted the attention of important collectors such as Yves St. Laurent. She quickly branched out, collecting Italian, Baltic, French, and English furniture and art spanning the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. After visiting family members in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Ms. Dandois became a pioneering dealer of Russian furniture. “So many countries; so many periods,” Ms. Dandois, 63, said. “The rule is no rule. Anything I like, anything I get interested in, I buy.”
An elegant Parisian, she was impeccably dressed at a recent interview despite the long hours she and her daughter, Ondine, worked on the exhibit. Before their arrival in New York, the two had been camping in Mongolia — a preview of the travels they’ll take together now that the gallery is closed.
When Ms. Dandois decided to close the gallery — she wanted to retire and Ondine, 28, had decided not to take over — she knew she wanted to sell the collection in a new way, by doing something “that’s never been done before.” To honor her desire to put on an unparalleled show, Sotheby’s invited designer and architect Juan Pablo Molyneux — who splits his time between New York and Paris — to create the unusually large exhibit space. Mr. Molyneux covered the gallery walls with enlarged photographs to make each room look as if it were from a different time period. One room features images of the Grand Staircase at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Another resembles a Swedish palace, complete with winter scenes glimpsed through the windows, and a third is covered with large-scale versions of etchings made by an Italian engraver, Giovanni Piranesi.
Ms. Dandois said the images encapsulate the inspiration that’s driven her purchases over the years. “The Hermitage — I’ve been there so many times,” she said, her gaze wandering over sumptuous red-carpeted stairways depicted on the walls, and the Japanese bamboo baskets, Empire furniture, and Italian chinoiserie.
Though the setting is different from the contemporary décor of her gallery, the lighting, layout, and varied objects mark the exhibition as unmistakably hers. “I started something, and now I’m closing the circle,” Ms. Dandois said. “This is a big good-bye.”