Word: auctioneering
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Errol Flynn, informed of an imminent war-bond auction in Portland, Ore., sent a lock of his hair...
Last week 71-year-old Frank Crowninshield, the dapper, white-haired fine arts editor of Vogue, who once wrote an article entitled "Ten Thousand Nights in a Dinner Coat," sold at auction his influential collection of modern, mostly French art. The 1019 items offered at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries put a total of $181,747 into "Crownie's" elegantly tailored pocket and the event itself had the quality of social luster, with a note of high gaga, which he dearly loves...
Gypsy Rose Lee walked off with a small Degas under her arm, too excited to wait for the rest of the auction. At the book sale particularly, connoisseurs held their seats as the prices skyrocketed. The Manet ellustrées published in 1929, containing Manet watercolor reproductions in color, went for $360-though its Paris price ten years ago was around $30. The collection was a market sensation from Derain to Dufy, from Rouault to Renoir. It was strongest in works by Crowninshield's old friends, French Painter André Dunoyer de Segonzac and French Sculptor Charles Despiau. Highest...
Crownie's friend, Columnist Westbrook Pegler, offered to contribute to the auction the imaginary Pegler Collection of Indecent Postcards. It was Pegler who once parodied Crownie's conversational style as follows...
John Adams' opinion of George Washington, expressed in a private letter sold at a Manhattan auction last week, was that "if he was not the greatest President he was the best Actor of Presidency we have ever had." On another contemporary: "The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i.e. all the glory of it." The letter, among the family papers of Philadelphia's late Alexander Biddle, went for $575 to an undisclosed buyer...