1,000 brushes with an art collector’s whimsy
In 1993, auction house Sotheby’s sold a staggering 88 works by Pablo Picasso in a magnificent sale in New York. The sale fetched an impressive $32 million, at a time when the art market was particularly depressed. In 2001, Sotheby’s facilitated another sale called The Eye of the Collector, which raised an impressive $ 54 million and included the famous Francis Bacon triptych Study of the Human Body. The collection that fuelled both these sales was of Stanley J. Seeger. Seeger, who died aged 81 in 2011, was a rather idiosyncratic collector.
Unlike most collectors who focus on the acquisition of well-known artworks as a form of display or monetary exchange, Seeger was primarily an art lover. In an essay for the 2001 sale catalogue, Michael Raeburn observed that Seeger’s collection was neither meant for pompous display, nor was it to patronise protégé artists. The collection was not put together with the help of dealers and advisers; it was, according to Raeburn, “the collection of a magician.”
2014 is all set to witness another fascinating sale, yet again f acilitated by the house of Sotheby, involving objects from Seeger’s collection. 1000 Ways of Seeing is a conglomeration of 1,000 objects from the collection and includes items as diverse as a 20 million year-old dinosaur egg, to Orson Welles’ script for Citizen Kane. This particular assimilation of objects yet again affirms the fact that Seeger’s love for all things curious drove him to collect. An heir to an oil and timber fortune, Seeger did most his collecting with his partner for 32 years, Christopher Cone. David Macdonald, Sotheby’s specialist who has researched this vast collection says, “This extraordinary collection, of almost encyclopaedic scope was assembled by Stanley
In an essay for the 2001 sale catalogue, Michael Raeburn observed that Seeger’s collection was neither meant for pompous display, nor was it to patronise protégé artists.
Seeger over 50 years. He was a man of protean taste and interests, who bought whatever caught his eye — from masterpieces by Pablo Picasso to antiquities and treasures from diverse civilisations. Covering 250 years of history and spanning 75 collecting categories, the 1,000 objects come from a dozen of Stanley Seeger’s homes around the world and reflect his voracious appetite for beautiful and interesting objects as well as things associated with key people or moments in history.” The past year has been dedicated to researching these 1,000 objects. For cataloguing, the research team came up with 12 thematic “chapters” ranging from Sacred and Divine to Power and Politics and Food and Drink. These themes encapsulate the relationship that all objects have with each other. Macdonald further states, “They also pay tribute to Stanley Seeger’s engaging intelligence, wry sense of humour and sheer joie de vivre.” There are many objects associated with historical figures including Winston Churchill’s armchair, Lord Nelson’s silver teapot or Al Capone’s cocktail shaker — a Christmas gift from the gangster’s men, engraved “To a regular guy, from the boys 1932.” There are also delicate Indian miniatures that appealed to Seeger, who also collected a significant number of Impressionist artworks.
The sale includes a large processional elephant made in Rajasthan in the 19th century. This object sat at the bottom of the great staircase of Stanley Seeger’s Berkshire mansion, The Deanery. The house was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the famous architect who built a section of Delhi. This is a perfect illustration of Seeger’s humour and playful interest in historical resonance — he brought India to a Lutyens Mansion in the same way that Lutyens had brought his own sense of style in the early 20th century. The sale also includes an important refectory table designed by Lutyens for his London home in 1897. “Many other pieces in the sale prompt anecdotes, including a remarkable carved relief of St. Peter dating from the 10th century. The quality of this rare example of early Engl i s h s t one c ar ving i s equalled only by its extraordinary later history. The relief was discovered by an amateur historian in 2004, marking the grave of a stray cat called Winkle, and subsequently appeared in an article in The Times in which a leading authority on Anglo-Saxon sculpture, Dr. Rosemary Cramp, was reported as describing it as being of ‘national importance’,” said Macdonald. The auction is scheduled for 5 and 6 March in London.