Near-record crowds of collectors have packed Sotheby’s galleries this week for an early peek at one of the most extravagant art and antique collections ever to hit the auction block.
The 1,200-item collection of socialites Jock and Betsey Whitney, culled from their five opulent mansions, could go for $150 million before the final hammer falls. It includes masterpieces by Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat, each of which could fetch $35 million, or more.
The collection of art, furniture and other belongings is one of the last big estates of America’s blue bloods to be liquidated.
The first batch of property of the childless couple goes on sale today and is expected to stretch over two weeks.
Jock Whitney, who died in 1982, made his fortune as a financier. His wife died last year.
The collection rivals that of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – the biggest ever auctioned at Sotheby’s – and the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which included about 1,300 separate items.
Sotheby’s said near-record crowds of the curious, as well as private collectors have viewed the wide range of items, which takes up all of the gallery floors in the York Avenue auction house.
The items expected to fetch the most interest are the works of Cezanne and Seurat.
The Cezanne still-life, “Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier,” was acquired by the Whitneys almost 50 years ago and is perhaps the most important work by the artist to appear at public auction in recent years, Sotheby’s said.
Seurat’s 1884 oil painting, “Paysage, L’Ile de la Grande-Jatte,” is the artist’s only landmark work of its kind remaining in private hands.
The painting is one of two related works that led to Seurat’s acclaimed masterpiece, “Un Dimanche a la Grande Jatte,” which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago as one of the greatest icons of modern art.
Collectors say the bidding could be intense for both pieces.
Two important works by Pablo Picasso are also up for $6 million each.
One of them, painted by Picasso in 1912, demonstrated Picasso’s evolution of his Cubist style, which swept the cafe set of experimental painters in Paris prior to World War I.
The work, “Le Journal,” also passed through the hands of some of the biggest names of the avant-garde movement over the decades.
The work was first owned by expatriate Gertrude Stein, who with her husband, Leo, was one of Picasso’s earliest patrons. Stein left the painting to her lover, Alice B. Toklas, in 1947. After Toklas died, Whitney bought the painting in 1967.
The other work by Picasso, “Nature Morte a la Bouteille de Rhum,” done in 1914, was also first owned by Stein, left to Toklas and purchased by Whitney.
The Whitney estate earlier donated $300 million worth of art works to the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Yale University.
The remainder of the Whitney art collection, along with the contents of the couple’s five homes, is being sold to help finance a new philanthropic foundation the estate is establishing.
The foundation, The Greentree Foundation, will be housed in Greentree, the couple’s mansion in Manhasset.
Possessions from the homes, ranging from silver work, rare manuscripts, antique furniture and decorative items, will be sold over the next four days.
Sotheby’s said large crowds were drawn to the exhibit because some items are on the block for as little as $250, such as a Tiffany three-piece silver coffee set.
Among rare books is William Blake’s 1794 book, “The First Book of Urizen,” up for $700,000. It’s one of only eight known copies, and the only one still in private hands.
Furniture came from their homes in Beekman Place, London’s St. James’s Place, Saratoga Springs, and Thomasville, Ga.