Art: Schiff Sale

In the famed wine-colored rooms of Christie’s (Christie, Manson & Woods), famed London auctioneers, the voice of Captain Sir Henry Floyd was heard last week. It lost none of its discreet fervor through much use. Standing tall and straight on the rostrum, Sir Henry was presiding at the auction sale of one of the richest art hoards of modern times: the collection of the late Banker Mortimer L. Schiff (Kuhn, Loeb). Banker Schiff, who died in 1931, had built a house on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for the proper housing and display of his treasures. Behind last week’s sale was the familiar story of a collector’s son who had inherited his father’s pile but not his father’s passion.

Son John Mortimer had shipped the collection to London, not only hoping for a readier market there but also tempted by Christie’s low commission (7½%). Over the block passed Flemish, early German and French paintings, English mezzotints, sketches and water colors by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard; Gothic, Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries; Louis XIV carpets, Louis XV gueridons, Louis XVI marquetry and console tables; della Robbia terra cottas, Sevres porcelain, Limoges enamels, Ispahan rugs, Italian crystal and marbles, bronzes, Oriental rugs, precious saltcellars, marriage coffers, inkstands, candlesticks.

Experts creamily agreed last week that the sale was going quite well. Purchases after two days totted up to $242,000. Jacques Seligmann of Paris & Manhattan paid $19,000 for Bouchardon’s slim, adolescent statue of Cupid, which the elder Schiff acquired in 1923 for $18,000.