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Some of the world’s finest art objects and paintings from the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection will soon be auctioned to benefit charities. The preview just opened in HK. Chitralekha Basu reports.
David Rockefeller, Jr. remembers a time when he and his siblings trying to get through the school homework would overhear his parents discuss whether it might be a good time to swap the Cezanne on the wall for a Monet. “Our parents were never telling us what to like,” says the scion of the illustrious family that helped build much of the foundations of the American economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even as they founded museums and supported a cultivation of the arts and aesthetics. “They only showed us, with their behavior, how much they appreciated art.”
Over 2,000 works of art from his parents’ astoundingly huge collection will be put up on auction at Christie’s in New York in May. Passing through Hong Kong a couple weeks before the preview of highlights from the New York auction opened in the city, Rockefeller sounded a tad nostalgic. After all, this was about giving up some of the world’s finest specimens of art that he had grown up watching. For example, among the lots to be auctioned there is a reclining nude by Henri Matisse which has been his particular favorite. Parting with such extraordinary works of art — priceless in terms of aesthetic, historical and monetary value, to say nothing of the family’s long-sustained emotional connection to these — wasn’t easy.
At the same time, he seemed pleased at being able to honor the pledge his father, also called David, had made — committing the proceeds from the sales of the humongous array of art he had collected over the years with wife Peggy to the cause of charity.
“At first I had thought I would feel mostly sadness,” said Rockefeller, who after his father’s death at 101 earlier this year has taken his place as the family patriarch and the Rockefeller Company chairman. “But then I remembered my father’s training: enjoy what you have and when you have them no longer do not look back. So I’m feeling very free.”
“It’s wonderful to think that many of these pieces will end up in other homes where other families can enjoy them during their lifetime,” he added.
A family of connoisseurs
Besides Matisse’s Odalisque couchée aux magnolias, the Hong Kong preview, which opened today, also features several representative works by the Impressionist and modern masters, such as Pablo Picasso’s pale, pre-pubescent girl, holding a bunch of vivid red flowers (estimated to fetch upwards of $70 million). The piece would hang in the family library at the Rockefellers’ East 65th Street Manhattan home until recently. A rare image from Claude Monet’s water-lilies series, done using unusually deep shades of ultramarine blue, also figures in the show.
Peggy and David Rockefeller were somewhat partial to the French Impressionists, hence the presence of works by Georges Seurat and Edourad Manet. There’s an extraordinary piece by Paul Gaugin, showing waves lapping against craggy rock-faces next to a luminously red beach.
The preview indicates the Rockefellers preferred to be individualistic in their choices, rather than necessarily going for the most-expensive or sought-after piece in the room.
“My mother and father chose what they collected together. They each had a veto. If one of them did not like anything the other did, they won’t buy it,” recalled David Rockefeller, Jr.
Not unlike himself, both his parents were exposed to art quite early. “Both of my grandmothers had very good eyes,” he says. “One of them was a painter, and one a collector (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller) who helped to found New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Both my mother and my father grew up with very strong teachers who were in fact their mothers, mostly.”
MOMA is among the 12 beneficiaries of the auction, besides Harvard University. “There are also organizations that support innovative agriculture and farming, and those which support conservation and environmental protection. So it’s quite a broad sweep,” says Rockefeller.
The Chinese connection
There is quite a range of art objects and collectibles from Asia among the auction highlights, including an Imperial blue and white “dragon” bowl (estimated at $100,000150,000) and a gilt-bronze figure of Amitayus made in the Imperial workshops by order of the Kangxi Emperor (reigned 1661-1722) (estimate: $400,000-600,000).
“My father was a great believer in Asia. He was a collector of Chinese porcelains. He was fascinated by the culture of Asia, especially China,” says Rockefeller. He hopes some of these pieces originating from China will eventually see a homecoming, picked up by Chinese buyers.
The preview tour was launched in Hong Kong — the only confirmed destination in Asia so far — partly in deference to the collection’s strong Asian connection. Of course, the decision is also informed by sound business sense. As Rockefeller reminded us, a third of the world’s notable buyers of highvalue art now come from China. “So we wanted to give the Chinese people an opportunity to have the first look.”
Marc Porter, Christie’s chairman of the Americas, agrees that launching an important Western collection in Hong Kong is meant to serve as “a recognition of the importance to us of our client base in Asia which we have built up through our leadership in the region”. He draws attention to the Rockefeller family’s long association with the region which, in fact, began in 1863 — when John D. Rockefeller, Sr. made his first donation to the Christian missionary efforts in China. The Hong Kong launch, he contends, is a reiteration of “the Rockefeller family’s long commitment and philanthropic ties to the region”.
It might come as a bit of a surprise but not all items in the Rockefeller sale are in the range of nine figures US dollars. “The online sales will offer a selection of accessibly priced objects, with prices starting at $200, and themed to the motifs that run throughout the collection,” informs Porter.
David Rockefeller, Sr., who was a pioneer of putting masterpieces of art in boardrooms and office spaces, and had famously commissioned a sculpture by the French artist Jean Dubuffet, putting it outside the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza for the enjoyment of the public, would probably have liked the idea that one didn’t have to be a millionaire to go for a piece of art that once belonged in a Rockefeller home.