"All 43 Works From Bunny Mellon’s Collection Sell at Sotheby’s Auction" @nytimes by CAROL VOGEL
A 1932 painting by Georgia O’Keeffe sold on Monday for $3.1 million. It had adorned Bunny Mellon’s Virginia dining room. Credit 2014 The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny, spent her lifetime collecting whatever caught her eye, from antique porcelains and shaker baskets to abstract paintings by Rothko and Diebenkorn. Her legendary taste and style, from an era long gone, proved irresistible for scores of collectors who descended on Sotheby’s York Avenue salesroom on Monday night to see 43 “masterworks,” as the auction house called them, bringing prices that were well past anyone’s expectations.
“History, legend, taste — you had everything tonight,” Lionel Pissarro, a great-grandson of the painter Camille Pissarro and a Paris-based art dealer, said after the auction.
Artwork spanning 400 years attracted bidders from 32 countries and four continents. The evening brought $158.7 million, topping a high estimate of $121 million. All 43 works sold. Among the stars: a 1970 abstract canvas by Mark Rothko of intense blues and greens that brought nearly $40 million, twice its high estimate, and several paintings and drawings by Richard Diebenkorn, including “Ocean Park No. 89,” which sold for $9.6 million, below its high estimate of $12 million.
The auction on Monday was the first in a series devoted to the art and objects that Mrs. Mellon, and her husband, Paul Mellon, had lived with and loved.
Mrs. Mellon, who died in March at 103, and her husband, the son of the financier Andrew W. Mellon, were celebrated philanthropists. The couple had either donated or bequeathed world-class artworks to many museums such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which received more than 900 works, including Cézanne’s “Boy in a Red Waistcoat.”
But there was still a lot left over, and on Monday night Sotheby’s was selling a personal selection of artwork that decorated the couple’s five homes, including Oak Spring Farms, the 2,000-acre estate in Upperville, Va., where Mrs. Mellon spent the last years of her life. The next Mellon auctions will feature everything from a blue diamond pendant to furniture, porcelains, baskets and even a fire truck.
Throughout her life, Mrs. Mellon was a passionate supporter of Rothko. Besides the canvas of blues and greens the sale also featured one from 1955, “Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange).” Eight bidders competed for the painting, which had been estimated to bring $20 million to $30 million and sold to the Nahmad Gallery for $36.5 million.
(Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent from $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
Diebenkorn was another artist Mrs. Mellon championed. Eight examples of his work — paintings as well as works on paper — were up for sale. Among the best of them was “Ocean Park No. 89,” a 1975 painting from the artist’s celebrated series, this one an abstract image of a sunset. Valentino, the fashion designer who was sitting in the front row, snapped up the painting for $9.68 million. It had been estimated to sell for $8 million to $12 million.
Mrs. Mellon was known for her love of blue — in her choice of porcelains, wall coverings and furniture, but also paintings. Lucio Fontana’s “Concetto Spaziale (Blu)” from 1968 was estimated at $300,000 to $400,000 but was bought by a telephone bidder for $965,000. It had hung in the bedroom of Mrs. Mellon’s 70th Street townhouse in Manhattan.
A spare painting of a barn that Georgia O’Keeffe painted during a 1932 visit to Canada that adorned Mrs. Mellon’s Virginia dining room was bought by another telephone bidder for $3.1 million, above its high $2.5 million estimate.
Mrs. Mellon was a well-known horticulturalist who redesigned the White House Rose Garden at the request of her friend Jacqueline Kennedy in the early 1960s. Many works had a botanical theme, like a tiny still life of flowers by the Dutch Golden Age painter Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, which sold for $4.6 million, above its high $4 million estimate.
The auction included several examples of furniture by Diego Giacometti (brother of the famous sculptor Alberto Giacometti), whom Mrs. Mellon met through her friend, the fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy. She commissioned him to make bronze furniture and sculptures for her homes. Not fond of his usual bronze patina, she asked him to paint them off-white especially for her. Two coffee tables that featured birds were in hot demand. One, from 1970 that was expected to bring $200,000 to $300,000, sold for $1.7 million; another that was expected to sell for $150,000 to $200,000 was purchased for $1.4 million.
“It’s all in a name,” Rachel Mauro, a Manhattan dealer, said as she was leaving the sale. Many other dealers hope that names like Warhol, Twombly and de Kooning — which fill the mega contemporary art auctions later this week — will have as much allure.