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John Richardson: A Scholar Collects Auctions

by habituallychic

08 . 31 . 20

Sir John Richardson, the “renowned Picasso scholar, curator and bon vivant” was an inveterate collector as seen by the rooms in his lower Fifth Avenue loft and Connecticut house. He also had exquisite taste and now some of his fabulous finds can be yours when they come up for auction at Stair Galleries and Sotheby’s this fall.

“So diverse are the things that have come my way that I had to make a virtue of necessity and mix them all together.”

– Sir John Richardson

The Stair auction which will take place September 16-17, 2020 will be “offering for sale Richardson’s collection of art and objects, including  works by Picasso and Warhol, Old Master prints, Neo-classical busts, photographs, porcelain, furniture and colorful textiles acquired over a lifetime of travel around the world.”

“Sotheby’s is pleased to announce John Richardson: A Scholar Collects, a unique collection of more than 50 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and prints spanning contemporary art, Old Masters, modern art, and more from the renowned art historian and award-winning biographer of Pablo Picasso. Among the many remarkable works in Richardson’s collection are pieces he received personally from many of the leading luminaries of 20th century art, such as Picasso, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, and Georges Braque. The collection is comprised of works from Richardson’s Fifth Avenue loft, noted for its aristocratically bohemian interiors that mixed antiquities with modern and contemporary art for a uniquely eclectic style, and was recently chronicled in John Richardson: At Home with photography by François Halard.” Auctions will take place in New York and London from September to December 2020.

I usually can’t afford anything in the well known collector auctions but I’m going to see if I can find something from Sir John Richardson’s beautiful collections so maybe a little of his legacy rubs off.