Word: collector
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...American banker, at that. Hit of the Paris season is the Orangerie des Tuileries exhibit of a masterpiece-studded collection lent by Manhattan's Robert Lehman. Delighted Paris art lovers and tourists swarmed to the exhibit by the thousands; even the exhibition poster (see cut) became a collector's favorite. One French connoisseur was heard to exclaim, "We never dreamed that anybody in America had a collection so wonderful, so well selected, so indicative of a really superior taste in art." For the story of the limelight-shunning banker-collector who brought off the show...
Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, the late Armenian international oil tycoon, was a born collector. He began at seven in a Constantinople bazaar, buying Greek coins with a Turkish five-shilling note his father had given him, went on to accumulate one of the world's most prestigious art collections, valued at up to $20 million. His scouts scoured the international art market for him. If they liked anything, Gulbenkian sent an expert; if the expert approved. Gulbenkian went himself. He bought only what he liked, purchasing for pleasure, never for investment or speculation, and he allowed only experts...
Fabulous Offer. In 1936 Collector Gulbenkian lent 30 of his finest paintings to London's National Gallery, later offered the gallery all the paintings as an outright gift on condition that they be housed separately, not spread thin among the museum's other masterpieces. The offer was refused. So, soon after the war, Gulbenkian packed up his 30 pictures, added ten more masterpieces to make the parcel even more attractive, and shipped it all to Washington's National Gallery, on a loan basis...
When the museum is ready, the 40 Gulbenkian masterpieces now in Washington on a loan basis will be packed up and shipped off to the kind of permanent home that their collector could never find for himself but finally managed to establish for his paintings...
When the auctioneer cried the last "Sold," the results were enough to make a collector see green. The 45 paintings brought in $874,000 (plus $147,000 in taxes), three times as much as the auctioneer had anticipated, and one of the canvases was sold for the highest known price ever paid for a modern painting. The painting: Gauguin's Still Life with Apples. (1901), a platter of succulent, Cézannesque green apples on an opulent green tablecloth. It went to Greek-American Shipping Executive Basil Peter Goulandris for $297,000 (plus 16.7% in taxes). Mrs. Biddle...