Art: Hen Opp

In 1464 the Papal Legate Teodoro Lelli, Bishop of Treviso, accompanied the Lord Bishop of Ostia on a mission to the court of Louis XI of France. There the Legate was sketched by the court artist, Maître Jean Foucquet, who etched his subject’s fleshy, self-assured features in silverpoint on a small piece of cream-colored paper. Last week, at Christie, Manson & Woods’s famed London salesrooms (“Christie’s”), this little picture was auctioned off to Lord Duveen of Millbank, world’s No. 1 art agent, for $53,550.

As part of the collection of the late Henry Oppenheimer, Foucquet’s Portrait of an Ecclesiastic was the biggest single item in what many a dealer considered the most important sale of Old Masters’ drawings ever held. Bidding with minute, professional nods, Lord Duveen and more than 200 other experts and spectators saw the 460 Oppenheimer drawings knocked down in three afternoons for some $500,000. Outbid by Lord Duveen on the Foucquet portrait, Manhattan’s Knoedler Galleries got a Study of San Sebastian by Filippino Lippi for $6,825. London’s Colnaghi & Co. paid $21,525 for Leonardo da Vinci’s tiny Rider on a Rearing Horse,

The collector whose wealth of Old Masters’ drawings thus sifted down last week through dealers to lesser collectors was born in 1859 in Washington, D. C. Migrating to England as a youth, Henry Oppenheimer went into “the City.” became a member of the Speyer Brothers’ banking firm. A generous and kindly Jew whose friends called him “Hen Opp,” prosperous Mr. Oppenheimer soon began to acquire majolica, medals, coins, intaglios, objects of antique Greek and Roman art. In 1912 “Hen Opp” laid the keel of his collection of Old Masters’ sketches when he made an extensive purchase from the Heseltine collection. Cultivating the friendship of art experts like the National Gallery’s Director Sir Charles Holmes, who could never understand how “a man of such essential goodness could have amassed a fortune in the City,” Collector Oppenheimer became himself an expert. For his own collection, he bought nothing but famed, time-honored drawings of unquestioned value, finally had to move to a bigger house to get all his art possessions under one roof.

When the War broke Speyer Brothers went out of business and “Hen Opp” retired, made no more money, bought little more art. With Zeppelins over London in 1917, Sir Charles Holmes’s thoughts turned to “Hen Opp,'” who had helped finance the Underground, was called “Father of the London Subway.” In his memoirs published fortnight ago* Sir Charles recalled how “Hen Opp” quickly arranged to store in “the unused station in the Strand . . . a perfect subterranean fortress . . . some 900 of our best pictures, with selected works from great private collections.” Generous to the last in loaning drawings from his own collection, “Hen Opp” died in 1932. Proceeds of last week’s sale, occasioned by the death of Oppenheimer’s widow, are estimated to be twice the amount the collector originally paid, will go to Sons Paul and Eric, less Christie’s 7½%.

* Self and Partners (Mostly Self)— Macmillan ($4).