Records tumble at Rockefeller estate sale
When David Rockefeller and wife Peggy were decorating the study in their Manhattan townhouse, they hung a Picasso portrait of a naked girl with a basket of flowers close to a Gauguin painting of waves surging on to a beach in Brittany.
The deep-red sand in Gauguin’s painting matched the flowers in Picasso’s portrait, and both matched the shade of paint on the walls. Now the Picasso has sold for US$115 million and the Gauguin for US$35m on the first night of a blockbuster sale at Christie’s in which the contents of the late couple’s four houses are being flogged for charity.
Rockefeller, a banking magnate, statesman and grandson of the oil tycoon John D Rockefeller, had ordered the sale of his vast collection - some 1500 lots - before he died last year at the age of 101, though even he might have blinked had he known that the decor above his desk alone would raise US$150m.
The first 44 lots brought in US$646m, breaking a record for the most expensive collection ever sold, which had been set at US$484m nine years ago by the estate of the late designer Yves Saint-Laurent.
On Thursday, the auction continued with the sale of a porcelain dessert service originally made for Napoleon. The French emperor had ordered the plates for his palace at Compiegne, though they were apparently delivered to Fontainebleau, where he repaired after negotiating the 1809 Treaty of Schonbrunn with Austria to negotiate an end to his relationship with the Empress Josephine, who could not give him a son.
Jody Wilkie, Christie’s ceramics specialist, said it was perfectly reasonable to presume that Napoleon had once eaten cake off the porcelain. He took the crockery with him into exile on Elba, and a portion of it was acquired by David Rockefeller’s mother.
Christie’s had predicted that it would sell for up to US$250,000 but the price quickly surpassed that mark, like French troops surging over the Italian Alps. The plates went for US$1.8m.
By then, dealers were talking of the ‘‘Rockefeller premium’’, which seemed to be driving up prices by a third. Here were pieces of art that had been held, not as financial assets in a warehouse, but as decorations in the homes of a famous American family.
Rockefeller’s cufflinks, each one a ring containing a small martini glass, had been estimated at a few hundred dollars but went for nearly US$14,000.
A small Edouard Manet painting of a vase of flowers, which had been a mere adornment to the Rockefellers’ entry hall in Manhattan, sold for US$13m, and perhaps buyers competed harder for one of Claude Monet’s water lily paintings, knowing that it had hung above the staircase in the family’s home in upstate New York. "’’Bidding!’’ shouted Xin Li, deputy chairwoman of Christie’s Asia, as the price for the Monet went past US$57m. Li, who was presumed to be fielding telephone bids from China, was a dominant presence in the first night’s auction.
A man in the hall shouted a bid for US$60m. ‘‘Welcome!’’ the auctioneer cried. ‘‘Many of you are in the game, all at the same level, it appears.’’
‘‘We will be here all night,’’ muttered a lady near the back.
‘‘It’s like a tennis game with five racquets,’’ said the auctioneer. ‘‘Bidding!’’ shouted Li again. Li would field the winning bids for both the Monet, which sold for US$84m, and a languid nude by Matisse, which went for US$81m.
– The Times