The Leonard A. Lauder Collection | A Once-in-a-Generation Sale of Klimt, Matisse & More at Sotheby's

I don't know if you're going to want to put this into the video. A few days before I was about to begin as the director of the Whitney, Leonard and I agreed to meet in a beautiful hotel suite at the Hotel Carlisle. The Whitney Museum had been through some pretty difficult times and he wanted me to understand deeply what I was walking into. We spent several hours talking and finally at the end of the evening he said, I only have one more piece of device for you about New York, David. It's something you need to understand. And I said, well what could that be, Leonard? And he said, in New York, you go from who's who to who's he, just like that. Well, I'll tell you, Leonard Lauder never became who's he. This November, Sotheby's will be presenting the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures that together trace the evolution of modernism. From Van Gogh's expertly rendered drawing of The Sower to Klimt's magnificent portrait of Elizabeth Lederer, a superlative painting in every way, to Matisse's bold sculptures like Figure Décoratif, and all the way forward to Agnes Martin's luminous painting, The Garden. As a collector, Leonard Lauder was a connoisseur, a curator and a historian. And of course, he was an extraordinary businessman and entrepreneur and visionary. Leonard's collection, Odyssey, began with things that interestingly were right there at hand. He would go to these Art Deco hotels as a child in Miami, and they had these postcards on their desks, and he would ask to politely have one. And then he would go to the next hotel and pick the next one up as well. Graphic design was always a foundational interest for him. For example, he also honed his eye when he started to collect Office of War Information propaganda posters during the Second World War. He acquired posters for the Austrian Secession and for early exhibitions of German and Austrian modernism. He loved modern Swiss posters with their streamlined design. And of course, he put together an extraordinary collection of American literary posters from the 1890s. He gave several hundred of them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That was really important to Leonard as a collector, to see these collections live on and reach the public. Leonard Lauder articulated his own philosophy of collecting. He said, my role is not to possess, it is to conserve. He began with cubism drawings, léger drawings, in the late 1970s. And by the early 80s, he had acquired a significant group of Picasso paintings and his sculpture, The Bronze Head of a Woman of 1909, as well as Braque and léger painting. Well, he'd already recognized cubism as the most important movement of the early 20th century because it had demonstrable influence on artists across the globe for decades, even a century after. Connoisseurship was a natural activity for Leonard. He looked at things in museums all the time. He honed his eye, and that eye had already been prepared from the postcard and poster collecting. The old saying in the Lauder family is that there are three kinds of paintings in this world. There's oh, there's oh my, and then there's oh my god. And oh my god is what Leonard shot for in terms of trying to get the very, very best. This is a collection of masterworks, but it is also a true lesson in connoisseurship, a reflection of decades of looking and, perhaps most importantly, learning. And it could never be amassed today. It would be impossible because so many of the best works by these artists now reside in museums, a great many of them thanks to Leonard Lauder's generosity. There are intergenerational aspects to this group of works. The Munch, Van Gogh, and Kirchner, for example, came from Mr. Lauder's mother's collection. The Klimts were his own, but other members of his family collected the artist alongside him. The Kurt Schwitters, in many ways, began his fine art collecting. The Schwitters is interesting because Mr. Lauder purchased this in 1966 at the G. David Thompson auction at Park Burnett, Park Burnett which later became Sotheby's. Not one but six bronzes by Henri Matisse, including a complete suite of his busts of Henriette, one of Edvard Munch's most important paintings from the turn of the century, and one of the best Van Gogh drawings to ever be offered at auction, topped off by a late Picasso work on paper that reminds us that Picasso was one of the best draftsmen of the 20th century. In Klimt, he saw sheer beauty. He saw an extraordinary creative mind. Some people refer to Klimt's work as decorative, but Leonard saw that decorative ornamental quality as integral to the history of modern art as we knew it. Leonard sat very close almost every day to the portrait of Elizabeth Lederer because it hung for the last 15 years in his dining room, and he would often have lunch there with people who had competed for attention between the portrait, the guest, and Leonard because there was so much to look at. Leonard was such a generous collector and a collector who was so committed to educating others and inspire others. He rarely put anything in storage. He wanted things to be seen and he wanted to live with them. Leonard Lauder was a great New Yorker and a great American. He cared about the country that enabled him and his family to become wealthy and create an enormously successful business, but it went deeper than that. His philosophy of collecting meant that he was dedicated to these objects, not only for his pleasure, but for the larger benefit of the public. He saw himself as a steward of these things. Leonard Lauder's legacy as a collector is probably manifold. We see it in the quality of the works that he acquired and then has donated to museums. The way that he supported those gifts with research funds, endowing chairs, supporting curators. One of the most important things he did in tandem with giving his Cubist collection to the Met is the Leonard A. Lauder Research Centre for Modern Art, which have the Cubist collection grow, be vital, a typical long-term vision of Leonard's collecting. Another extraordinary aspect of his legacy. Leonard Lauder had an absolute commitment to American art. He was very interested in it, but rather than choose to acquire works for himself, he threw all of that energy and support into a museum institution, that being the Whitney Museum of American Art. Leonard was involved in giving well over a thousand works in the collection, and when you think that the Whitney's collection is only somewhat more than 20-something thousand, that's, you know, a pretty large number percentage of the works. He was both the president of the board, he was the chairman of the board, and then he was finally the chairman emeritus of the board. I think he was like a $20 member of the Whitney, that was his first role. So this is not somebody who just kind of came in the doors and said, I want to be the chairman of the board, not at all. He worked his way up the ranks of the Whitney. He was exposed to some of the great collectors, people like Howard Whitman, for example, B.H. Friedman, the Tremains. He knew a lot of the great collectors who were collecting American art, who he was mostly introduced through the Whitney. Museum trustees often get a bad reputation, because they're seen to be promoting ideas that support their own collecting habits. It's not a terribly off-mark idea, by the way, but it has nothing to do with the way Leonard Lauder approached his job as chairman of the Whitney Museum Board of Trustees. What he cared about was that the Whitney Museum would stand for not just an assembly of things, but a place of learning. An inspiration to people, the people who love art, and hopefully the people who grew up to make art as well. He said, look, every great museum has a great collection, and people go there because they're must-see works of art. He knew that the Whitney had many of those, but he also knew that the Whitney had huge gaps, had missed certain artists, and he worked very, very hard with the curators over a many-year period to add really important works by a whole range of artists. He was one of many people involved with the Jasper Johns' Three Flags acquisitions. People were very upset at the time about it, because it was the first American painting that ever sold for a million dollars. Artists that you wouldn't think of, Gerald Murphy. Gerald Murphy only made, I think, a couple of dozen paintings that survived. Florine Stettheimer. Leonard got it in his head that this great Stettheimer of the New York Harbor, or the Statue of Liberty, must be in the Whitney Museum. He spent 10 years working with me and a couple of others to get Kelly Simpson to donate it to the museum. He loved partners, and he loved partnerships, and he would often say, I will do this if you will do that. Leonard believed on focused giving, focused collecting, and focused support. He gave a gift of over $100 million for endowment to help kick off our new building project. He knew that the Whitney needed to grow, and he knew that it would be, at best, very difficult on Madison Avenue. He gave the money, and he continued to support the institution. I mean, his name is on the building now. Philanthropy is not only giving to what you want to give, but what you believe is going to be the best. American art is great because American artists are great. And Leonard understood that what makes great art are great artists. The museum's job was to support generation after generation of American artists, and hopefully support them before the world recognized their greatness. Support them at a moment when they needed that support. Leonard understood that, and as a result, the Whitney Museum continues to be thought of as an artist's museum. The collection tells the story of modernism, but it also tells the story of the collecting of modern art in and of itself. Within these individual provenances, these individual stories, you can see landmark collectors across the 20th century. When we talk about the power of provenance, we are saying continuously and forever that the story is important. The story inside the picture, the work of art, the sculpture, and the story outside of it, starting with the artist, when he or she created it, to the first collector, until today, and to the next person or institution who will share their identity with it for whatever duration of time. Each of the works in the Lauder Collection has its own story, and these vary from the late Picasso drawing that was a gift to his doctor and friend, Dr. Gutmann, to the Schwitters, which for a time was in the collection of G. David Thompson, a fabulous businessman and industrialist based in Pittsburgh, who tried to give his entire collection to the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1959. There is a power to the provenance of an artwork. It is what links us today to its inception, and this story across time underscores the significance of an artwork, and the way that it does that is actually pretty direct, because once an artwork is created and it starts to pass through the hands of important collectors, important dealers, that in and of itself gives an artwork more gravitas. It gives an artwork its own history beyond the era of the artist who created it himself or herself. We can see that directly in Van Gogh's Sower, which was executed in Arles in 1888, and this composition, it shows a lone sower, scattering seed across a furrowed ground beneath the blazing Provencal sun, and reinterpreting the motif that Millet put down. Van Gogh transforms the composition and enlivens it with rhythmic pen strokes that seem to almost radiate light. This was a drawing that Van Gogh sent as a gift to his friend Emile Bernard as part of an exchange between two young artists searching to create their own new pictorial languages. From Bernard, it passed to Ambroise Vollard, the visionary Paris dealer who championed artists like Cezanne and Gauguin. Later, it crossed the Atlantic to John Nicholas Brown II, an American statesman and collector, and then to his son, J. Carter Brown, the legendary director of the National Gallery of Art, who transformed the museum world. And finally, in 1979, the drawing entered the collection of Estée Lauder and has remained with the family ever since. And this is a drawing that carries within it the intertwined histories of modern art and its great collections. Sometimes you can tell just as much about a painting from the back of it as you can from the front of it. What I mean by that is the story of how an artwork came to be and came to be here is just as important as the composition itself. Raschenberg's Untitled Combine from 1958 was acquired at auction by the Lauders. It had come from the collection of the photographer K. Harris, and it had been a gift directly to K. Harris from Raschenberg. And we know that because it's inscribed on the back for K.H. K. was hired to take photographs of five young artists, two of whom were Raschenberg and Jasper Johns. It is deceptively complicated work. It's so beautifully painted with luscious gestural strokes, but also with really these scrappy materials of everyday life. I also think that Raschenberg really considered his viewers to be integral to the creative process, that he was not imposing a narrative on them, but actually asking them to bring their own experiences to his works. It's almost unheard of. It is actually unheard of in our world to have three paintings of this quality by Gustav Klimt in one place for any duration of time. And getting to look at these closely, that power of seeing when you really see something and learn about it and spend time with it has been a complete revelation. Klimt, the Viennese system, a processionist artist loved throughout the world for his great paintings like the Golden Block Bauer called The Kiss, developed at the early 20th century of his golden paintings, but also develops further into these extraordinary big full-length portraits. Klimt is the master of these full-length portraits of society figures with these extraordinary imaginative backgrounds, with carpets and designs on the floor, but never taking the attention away from the personality and the presence of the sitters. The portrait of Elizabeth Lederer by Klimt is a masterpiece of 20th century art. This is one of the last great commissioned portraits in full scale by Klimt remaining in private hands. Klimt's portraits were of his friends and patrons. With Elizabeth Lederer, he's doing a portrait of a young girl that he has known almost since she was born. Her parents are his greatest advocates, his most generous patrons. Serena and August Lederer were really crucial for Klimt's life and work. They kind of saved Klimt when he was rejected by the Viennese academic art world. They bought multiple oils, drawings. Elizabeth Lederer is imbued with a kind of regal authority, which is quite extraordinary for a young woman of her age. She is a very poised, fashionable young woman. She's confident, but not brazen. She's wearing a very elegant hobblescoat with a floral wrap around her. Around her shoulders is this kind of cape that is a real Chinese emperor, royal robe. So he has given her, this 20-year-old, the absolute regal standing. With Klimt's greatest portraits, we feel his attachment to the sitter, his attachment to their dress, to the accoutrements around them. All of which bespeak a world of comfort, security, cosmopolitanism, liberalism as well, at that very fragile moment in history. Klimt went to Paris in 1909. So you've got this influence of the fauves, which you can see in this flowering of color, the orange and greens in the carpet, the yellows, the purples, the pinks, all this kaleidoscope of fresh, fauvelike color. Behind her is this extraordinary dragon tapestry that in a way embodies her in this scene. On the wall behind are several motifs from East Asian art. One of Klimt's great masteries as an artist was his ability to fuse so much into one painting. Alongside his great commissioned portraits, Klimt was painting landscapes. These were really his paintings where he could be free to experiment, to push the boundaries. We have two landscapes by Klimt. The first painting is almost an impressionistic, fully pointillist picture. Every inch of the canvas is painted in this relatively broad and vibrant brushwork. We know that Klimt went to Ravenna. He was absolutely enthralled by the Byzantine mosaics. And somehow this comes through in this painting with the jewel-like points of color of the flowers in the meadow. And the way he has expanded the surface of the meadow to capture virtually the entire picture plane in this sort of symphony of color. We have a feeling of being enveloped in nature. And nature in this case was the gardens near the country house that they would rent when they were on the Attersee on holiday. He was particularly drawn by these flowering landscapes. There's not an inch of canvas that is not painted. Then in 1916, you have the later painting, the forest slope on the Unterach, which is becoming looser with the brushstrokes. It has more of a compositional drama with the lake and then the forest slope. And you can see these parts as he's looking across the lake to Unterach, I might say, to the village beyond. Here he's also experimenting with the landscape as a format in its own right. Traditionally, it would have been a landscape horizontal format. And the square format makes it more modern. In fact, it's not unlike what Monet was doing at the time. Klimt's large square format landscapes are unique in early 20th century modernism. They're not in any way abstract. They're rigorously structured. But at the same time, the handling of paint, particularly in the earlier work of 1908, is still very much engaged in an impressionist idiom. Having the two landscapes and the full-length portrait gives us a really intense summary of Klimt's great work in these last years. And to have three together is something that you see only in museums today. The gentleman connoisseur, the gentleman business tycoon, many people talked about Leonard Lauder in that way. But he was also very kind, extraordinarily kind. Great example of Leonard's generosity and commitment to the museum took place at a very difficult moment in the Whitney Museum's life. The stone facade of the Whitney Museum was beginning to slip on the pins that held it to the concrete building. It was very frightening. If one of those stone slabs fell, maybe 20 of them would fall. It would be a disaster. I immediately called up Leonard and told him what the story was. He said, well, that's a problem, isn't it? I said, yeah. He said, what do you think it's going to cost? I said, the engineer said it's going to cost two or three million dollars. He said, it'll cost six million. Maybe seven. He said, I'll be right over. He walked into my office, put a check for four million dollars on my desk and said, match it. That's Leonard Lauder.