Word: johnes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Irises was owned by John Whitney Payson, who had lent it to a small university museum in Maine. But with the news of Sunflowers' sale for $39.9 million -- and with little tax relief in sight if he gave it to a museum -- he decided to sell it through Sotheby's, which cautiously predicted a price between $20 million and $40 million and went to tell Bond the glad news. Sotheby's did not need to cast a delicate fly over Bond and strip it softly in. The fish was already halfway over the gunwale and champing eagerly...
...night of the auction, an agent for Bond in New York City placed his bids by telephone. Irises, according to observers, quite quickly went up to $40 million. After a slight lull, the contest resumed between two telephones, whose disembodied bids were relayed to auctioneer John Marion. Moments later, Irises was hammered down to an anonymous bidder at $49 million -- $53.9 million counting the 10% buyer's commission. The name of the underbidder on the other phone has never been divulged. A year went by before it was announced that Bond was the new owner of Irises...
...auction house had no choice. It had punctually paid John Payson the full sale amount, $49 million, and now the exposure of the buyer's inability to pay for the painting would have been horrendous. Although the firm could have repossessed Irises and put it on the block again, such a move would almost certainly have been a disaster. It might have brought $30 million, maybe $35 million, according to informed sources -- a fire sale. And the results for the art market if the World's Most Expensive Picture lost a third of its value in a year...
...headlines, sold some 400,000 copies and soared to the top of the best-seller lists. Yet if Novak went with a winner, so did Reagan. Novak, 41, came to the collaboration with credentials of his own. He is the golden mouthpiece of the nation's celebrities, a literary John Alden who can consistently woo -- and win -- the public in their behalf. In 1984 Iacocca, Novak's collaboration with auto executive Lee Iacocca, jolted the publishing world by selling 2.7 million copies. He followed that up with best sellers on Tip O'Neill and Sydney Biddle Barrows, the deb-styled...
...sons. As for a return to the solo byline of William Novak, he says it's not soon likely. "I get far more ego gratification and attention from these books than I ever did from my own." But aren't the celebrity books his own too? No. This John Alden, unlike the original, shrinks from speaking for himself. "I don't fool myself into thinking that my books are best sellers," he says. "The celebrities are the selling point...