San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Gettys to auction off major collection
A second major auction of fine art and furnishings from the collection of San Francisco philanthropists Ann and Gordon Getty will take place this summer, focusing on the contents of the Gettys’ Berkeley hills property, known as the Temple of Wings.
Art, furniture and textiles from the home exemplifying both the British and American Arts and Crafts movement and Pre-Raphaelite painting style will be auctioned live on June 14 in New York, the international auction house Christie’s announced on Friday, May 5. That event will be supplemented by two additional auctions held online.
The Temple of Wings, a Greco-Roman style estate dating to 1914, was decorated by Ann Getty, a well-known interior designer, around her collection of turn-of-the-century art and antiques.
The auction follows 10 soldout sales in October 2022 that featured fine art, decorative art and textiles, jewelry and luxury handbags from the Gettys’ mansion in Pacific Heights and raised more than $150 million benefiting the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation for the Arts.
Although proceeds from the forthcoming sale will not be distributed by the same foundation, it will again benefit Bay Area arts and science organizations, including the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, University of San Francisco, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Berkeley Geochronology Center and the Leakey Foundation.
Gordon Getty, 89, is a classical music composer, investor and billionaire heir to the Getty Oil fortune. Gordon’s father, J. Paul Getty, was the founder of the Getty Oil Co. Ann Getty
died in September of 2020, with plans already in place for the sales and distribution of funds.
Maria Santangelo, the couple’s chief curator, noted in an exclusive interview with The Chronicle that the contents of the Temple of Wings focused on different eras of art and design from those in the couple’s famed mansion in San Francisco. While that home was known for its mix of 18th and 19th century art and European and Asian antiques, the contents of the Berkeley property drew inspiration from the English Aesthetic movement, specifically the design philosophy of William Morris. Art by Victorian-era artists including French painter WilliamAdolphe Bouguereau were also an important part of the house’s interior design.
“The Temple of Wings is almost in a hidden garden surrounded by cypresses with a view down towards the water,” said Jonathan Rendell, Christie’s deputy chairman for the Americas. “(Ann Getty) filled it with her reflections on late 19th century culture, and did an unusual thing in that she fused European culture of
the latter half of the 19th century with American culture.”
Among the paintings in the sale are Sir Lawrence AlmaTadema’s 1895 work “A Coign of Vantage,” depicting three women in classical dress gazing at the water below. The work, which hung in the house’s “blue living room,” has an estimated sale price of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
The work was among Ann Getty’s earliest purchases for the house, said Santangelo, and was an anchor for the design scheme.
“It echoes the architect’s conception of the house as a Roman villa,” said Santangelo. “You’ve got this vertiginous drop into the Berkeley hills overlooking the bay, (and the figures in the painting) are overlooking the bay. You’ve got these beautiful, toga-clad models
in the picture, which also reference some of the earlier history of this house,” whose original owners taught modern dance there.
“It really almost puts you in a picture within a picture how she displayed it,” she said.
Lord Frederic Leighton’s painting “The Bath of Psyche,” first exhibited in 1890, is also among the lots in the sale, with an estimated price between $300,000 and $500,000. Jules Bastien-Lepage’s “Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt” from 1879 was also featured in the Temple of Wings but was sold in the October sale for $2,280,000, a record-breaking price for the artist.
Decorative arts and furniture featured in the June sale are primarily from the Victorian Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. Among them are a Gothic Revival oak reading stand reportedly purchased at the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, an event pivotal in the history of Arts and Crafts design.
Among the lots are several glass works by Tiffany Studios, including rare versions of Tiffany’s Wisteria and Butterfly stained-glass table lamps that were featured in the 2009 Legion of Honor exhibition “Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique.” Each lamp’s estimated sale price starts at more than $300,000.
Other glass artists represented in the sale include Émile
Gallé, Muller Frères, Daum and Lalique.
Pottery in the sale includes pieces by Newcomb College Pottery, Grueby Faience Co., Rookwood and William De Morgan, including one of De Morgan’s rare “Iznik” tile panels.
Important textiles by British artist Morris, a pioneer of the English Arts & Crafts movement, include a hand-knotted “Hammersmith” rug estimated to sell for $70,000 to $100,000. Fashion in the sale includes antique garments by Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny, known for creations like his pleated Delphos dresses inspired by ancient Greece and Rome.
“She was buying Fortuny to wear specifically in that space,” said Rendell of Ann Getty. “It’s almost like she was channeling the aesthetic movement.”
The property was designed by famed architect Bernard Maybeck in 1911 and completed by A. Randolph Monro in 1914 as the home and dance studio of Florence Treadwell Boynton. Originally designed as an open-air residence, the current
home is built around a Ushaped courtyard lined with Corinthian-style columns. The structure was enclosed following a fire in 1923.
Boynton was a childhood friend of famed San Franciscoborn modern dancer Isadora Duncan, who developed a style of movement inspired by poses in classical Greco-Roman sculpture. Boynton and her daughter Sulgwynn Quitzow taught dance classes in the estate’s studio for decades.
In 1994, the property was acquired from Quitzow by the Gettys.
Unlike the public showplace that the Gettys’ San Francisco house on Broadway was, the Berkeley house was more of a personal retreat for Ann Getty, according to Rendell and Santangelo.
The “Broadway (property) was like a great big symphony,” said Rendell. “This is a quiet riff on a guitar or a piano. It’s that 19th century idea of the house beautiful.”
Santangelo said there are currently no plans to sell the Temple of Wings property itself.