Turning Up Gems at Yard Sales for the Wealthy
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Photographer Richard Avedon died last October at the age of 81 while on assignment for the New Yorker. By May, Sotheby’s was auctioning off the best of his art collection, including a Matisse work on paper. Tomorrow, Avedon’s more personal effects – beds, rugs, sculptures by his mother, and Audubon animal prints – go on sale at the auction house.
It’s been an unusually busy season for Sotheby’s head of single-owner sales, Elaine Whitmire. This is the third of four major single-owner sales at Sotheby’s this fall; one such auction every month and a half is more typical.
An auction of property from the estate of fashion designer Geoffrey Beene brought in $4 million in September, and Laurance Rockefeller’s estate brought in $7.8 million this week. Capping the run of single-owner sales will be an auction of an estimated $25 million worth of Faberge clocks, French furniture, and other property from the collection of Lily and Edmond Safra, on November 3 and 4.
These yard sales for the wealthy can turn up true finds, particularly when the sellers collected with the knowledge and zeal of museum curators. Avedon’s estate is the smallest of the four in dollar value, estimated to bring in a high of $400,000, but nearly each one of the 142 objects reflects a surprisingly warm sensibility.
The material, Ms. Whitmire said, gels together through the sheer force of the photographer’s eye. “Everything was a composition for him, down to a lamp or the choice of where the phone was.” Artifacts of Avedon’s eye remain in high demand: His dye-transfer suite of the Beatles sold to a private American buyer at Christie’s this week for $464,000, an auction record for the artist.
Yet the Avedon material on offer also points to one of the limitations of single-owner sales: Many choice lots are siphoned off into category sales. Avedon’s Matisse, “Femme Accoudee (Study for Michaela),” for instance, sold for $240,000 at Sotheby’s day sale of Impressionist and Modern art last spring. Sculptures by Henry Moore and Aristide Maillol from Rockefeller’s collection are appearing in the upcoming Impressionist and Modern sales.
“You get a sense quickly of whether it should be single-owner or not,” Ms. Whitmire said. “It needs to hold together, either through a theme, such as all African art, or through the contents of one’s residence.” The marquee value of a famous name can also tie a sale together and elevate the value of other wise ordinary effects.
The 690 Rockefeller lots included a widely varying assortment of richly colored Navajo rugs, rare paired Meissen porcelain birds, generic landscape paintings, and weathered furniture. “He’s someone who surrounded himself with things he loved,” Ms. Whitmire said. The sale earned $7.8 million, well above its estimate of $3.8 million to $5.5 million, with proceeds going to the Laurance S. Rockefeller Foundation.
The final single-owner sale at Sotheby’s will offer nearly $6 million worth of Faberge boxes, clocks, inkstands, and cigarette holders – essentially trinkets elevated to art by craftsmanship and rarity. Edmond Safra, who died in 1999, and his wife, Lily, had a taste for objects that unabashedly displayed their allegiance to extreme luxury and high culture.
The Safras purchased 18th-century French furniture, much of which was owned by the French court. The star lot is a Louis XVI ebony bureau plat and cartonnier (c. 1770), a desk fabricated by the king’s cabinetmaker estimated at $5 million to $7 million. This section of furniture alone is estimated at $17 million to $25 million. Also on sale are 19th-century portraits, Persian carpets, and 18th-century Anglo-Indian furniture.
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Single-owner sales propelled last week’s photo sales to strong results. At Sotheby’s on Monday, the collection of 34 vintage prints from Joseph and LaVerne Scheiszler took in $4.74 million, at the high end of its pre-sale estimate. Only one lot failed to sell, and the biggest seller – Edward Weston’s “The Breast” (1921-23) – set an all-time record for any photograph at auction, going for $822,400. It was matched the next day by Dorothea Lange’s “White Angel Breadline” at Sotheby’s multiple-owner sale, which took in $5.57 million. Sotheby’s sold $10.3 million worth of photographs in two days.
At Christie’s on Monday, German businessman Gert Elfering’s collection of works by Avedon, Irving Penn, Peter Beard, and Horst P. Horst brought $7.16 million, well above its pre-sale estimate of $4 million. Avedon’s Beatles portrait led the sale, followed by Penn’s “Woman in Moroccan Palace (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Marrakech, 1951” (printed in 1983),which sold for $307,200.Christie’s also pulled in $1.53 million for its auction of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers.
Christie’s multiple-owner sale on Wednesday set a record for a photo graph lot, when Edward S. Curtis’s complete “North American Indian” portfolio sold for $1.4 million, more than double its pre-sale estimate. The sale took in $5.8 million, pumping up Christie’s three-sale total to $14.5 million.
Phillips de Pury’s multiple-owner sale last week earned $4.36 million, just above its low estimate. The top lots were Andreas Gursky’s “EM Arena I” (2000), which sold for $291,520, and Nicholas Nixon’s portfolio “The Brown Sisters” (1975-2004), which fetched $180,000.
THE BEST OF SOTHEBY ‘ S SINGLE – OWNER SALES
Property From the Estate of Richard Avedon (October 14)
John James Audubon (after), “Collared Peccary (Plate XXXI)” (1844). Estimate: $3,000 to $5,000. Avedon hung this hand-colored Audubon lithograph of a screaming wild pig above an old wooden slate table crowded with books, quills, and a minimalist stone sculpture by his mother, Anna.
An Egyptian Faience baboon figure (late period, 716-30 B.C.). Estimate: $3,000 to $5,000. Avedon bought whimsically, collecting ancient Egyptian totems, small Greek terra-cotta heads, and winding walnut staircases that had served as 19thcentury architect’s models. This 2 3/8-inch baboon figure looks like a pensive old man, squatting with his paws on his knees. It sat on a walnut table alongside other tiny figurines.
Property From the Collections of Lily & Edmond Safra (November 3 & 4)
Louis XIV ormolu-mounted pewter, brass, tortoiseshell, and ebony marquetry coffer, by Andre-Charles Boulle (c. 1685). Estimate: $700,000 to $1 million. Andre-Charles Boulle was the official cabinetmaker for Louis XIV and his court. Few of these elaborate small caskets, called coffres de toilette and intended for jewels or other incidentals, remain in private hands. Two larger but similar versions are owned by the Getty Museum.