Art: The Greatest Auction

From the start it was clear that the auction of the art, furniture and silver collection of the late French-born Wall Street Banker and Investment Counselor Georges Lurcy was going to be a major event in the art world. The catalogue, under the terms of Lurcy’s will, was printed in two handsome, hardbound volumes, sold for $7.50. On hand to compete for 65 choice paintings ranging from Bonnard to Vuillard. and other treasures, Was a select list that included top U.S., British and European dealers plus no less than 250 U.S. millionaire art collectors. The results at Manhattan’s Parke-Bernet Galleries last week staggered even old-hand auctioneers. The first night, bids for paintings rolled up an alltime high of $1,708,500.* Total for the three-day auction: $2,221,355, a sum that blew the roof right off the rising art market.

All this was a tribute to the cultivated taste and shrewd buying of a comparatively little-known French financial wizard who rarely paid over $10,000 for a painting, rarely made a bad buy. Born in Paris plain Leon Georges Levy, he early attracted the attention of the Rothschild family, who started him off as a clerk in the Rothschild bank, used him as a broker for their interests when he went into business for himself. He was soon collecting art. Just before the fall of France, he sailed for the U.S. (where he changed his name to Lurcy), managed to smuggle out 38 paintings by way of Portugal. In the U.S. he bought paintings by Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin at the bottom of the wartime market. Said a Frenchwoman who knew him well, “Georges, intelligent? He invented the word.”

Just how intelligent was apparent last week to dealers and art collectors, 4,100 of whom turned up in one day to preview the collection. Faced with more than 4,000 applications for tickets to the auction, Parke-Bernet sent out 850 for the main, velvet-draped salesroom, another 700 for side galleries, where for the first time at a U.S. auction bidders could view the works in black and white on closed-circuit TV, have their bids transmitted by loudspeaker. Forewarned of the expected crush, Millionaire Collectors Nelson Rockefeller and Winthrop Aldrich arrived 1½ hours early to get seats. Metropolitan Museum Director James J. Rorimer, arriving late, had to sit on the floor in front of the auctioneers’ rostrum; Mrs. Stavros Niarchos found herself tucked away out of sight in the wings of the stage; Greek Ship Owner Alex Goulandris spent the evening standing in the side aisle.

From the first crack of the hammer by veteran Auctioneer Louis J. Marion, paintings by Picasso, Signac, Pissarro, Lautrec were knocked down at the top prices Parke-Bernet had noted in their confidential books. But when a handsome view of the Tuileries by Edouard Vuillard, appraised at $25,000, was placed on the stand, there was a long-drawn sigh of delight, followed by a bedlam of bids as 18 green-uniformed bid callers and four assistant auctioneers tried to keep up with the rush that shot the price in 2 min. 15 sec. from a $15,000 opener to a Vuillard world record of $70,000. To the consternation of the mink-coated main-salesroom elite, the loudspeaker bids from lesser collectors relegated to the TV sets kept right up with the big money.

Nearly every U.S. record for top painters fell. By the time the evening was out, old collectors had staged a comeback, and newcomers had made their bid for fame. Among the most significant sales: ¶ Actor Edward G. Robinson, who last February had parted with a fortune in paintings to complete a divorce settlement, was on the telephone from Montreal (where he is touring in The Middle of the Night), picked up Derain’s Vase of Flowers for $5,500, Georges Braque’s The Sausage for $12,000. ¶ Mrs. David Rockefeller went $11,000 over estimates to buy Paul Signac’s pointillist Beach Scene, St. Brieuc, for $31,000.

¶ Former Ambassador to France C. Douglas Dillon went $38,000 over estimates to pay $92,500 for Monet’s Woman in a Garden, will lend it to the Metropolitan Museum for extended exhibition this week.

¶ Vuillard’s At the Tuileries for $70,000, and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Aux Ambassadeurs, Gens Chics for $95,000, went to Manhattan’s Carstairs Gallery.

¶ Alex Goulandris, second cousin to Basil Goulandris whose $297,000 for Gauguin’s Still Life with Apples set a new high (TIME, June 24), stepped into the ranks of top Greek buyers by purchasing a Matisse for $25,000, Bonnard’s Still Life with Cat (appraised at $50,000) for $70,000, and Gauguin’s Tahitian scene, Man Taporo for $180,000.

On the two succeeding days, prices for French furniture, porcelain and bric-a-brac kept up the same furious pace. Items: a Louis XV Sevres porcelain soupiere, sold for $3,000 in 1941, was bid in at $29,000; carved and gilded Louis XVI armchairs went for $2,500 each; marble-topped, gilded and painted Louis XV commodes for $14,000. Prize bid of the whole sale was for Renoir’s sunny landscape La Serre, expected to bring between $120,000 and $140,000, which went to Manhattan’s Rosenberg & Stiebel for an even $200,000. The dealer refused to say for whom he was bidding. But sharp-eyed reporters could hardly fail to note the jubilation of Henry Ford 11 and his wife when the painting was knocked down, or miss Mrs. Ford’s breathless “thank you” to her husband.

*Comparative records: $860,000 for the 1952 Cognacq collection in Paris; $874,000 for the Biddle collection in Paris (TIME, June 24); $914,256 for the -Weinberg collection in London.