Laurance Rockefeller Sale A Glimpse Into The Lives Of Leading Art Patrons

NEW YORK CITY

:Sotheby's sale of the Laurance S. Rockefeller estate on October 11 and 12 offered a privileged glimpse into the private world of one of the country's great art collecting dynasties, the Rockefellers. The pioneering Rockefeller family helped build The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and Colonial Williamsburg, among many other institutions.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the patriarch's daughter-in-law, stands out among the clan as an individual of refined aesthetic judgment. She passed her love of art to her son Nelson, especially. Her son Laurance, the fourth of six children of Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller, Jr, inherited the family love of place, a sensibility permeating the diverse, 690-lot consignment that was peppered with nostalgic allusions to Maine and Hawaii, both favorite vacation spots, and home and work.

In an essay accompanying the sprawling catalog cum family album, Sotheby's Vice Chairman James G. Niven describes Laurance Rockefeller, who died in July 2004 at the age of 94, as "a visionary philanthropist, a pioneering venture capitalist, a legendary conservationist, a questioning philosopher and, above all, an optimistic humanist."

Perhaps best known for his work in conservation and the environment, says Niven, Laurance Rockefeller played a pivotal role in the development of several national parks, including Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. In 1956, he founded RockResorts, developers of a luxury hotels in spectacular natural settings. The Rockefellers sold the brand in 1986.

Drawn from Laurance Rockefeller's Fifth Avenue apartment, which recently sold to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch for a record $44 million, his residence in the family compound at Pocantico in Westchester County, N.Y., and homes in Vermont and Wyoming, Property From The Estate of Laurance S. Rockefeller realized $7,834,630, more than $2.5 million above the presale high estimate of $5.5 million. Porcelain accounted for more than half of the total.

Some of the Rockefeller property was slated for other sales. In September, Sotheby's auctioned an early blue and white Ming vase for $3,936,000 ($300/400,000.) Still to come in Sotheby's Prints, Impressionist and Modern Art, and Contemporary art sales are works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Odilon Redon and George Rickey. There will even be a few Laurance Rockefeller pieces in the January Americana sale. Sale proceeds benefit the Laurance S. Rockefeller Fund.

Interest centered on Rockefeller's collection of Eighteenth Century Meissen birds, said to be the best selection to come to auction since Sotheby's sold the Nelson Rockefeller collection in 1980. Collecting the birds, some of which were modeled from life and are full size, has always been a princely pursuit. Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, King of Poland and founder of the Royal porcelain manufactory at Meissen, made the pastime fashionable. In the 1730s, he began transforming a small palace in Dresden into the Japanese Palace, a setting for his huge porcelain collection. He commissioned 600 life-sized figures of animals and birds to be modeled by Johann Gottlieb Kirchner and his assistant, Johan Joachim Kaendler.

Most of the European porcelain in the sale was acquired through a favorite Rockefeller family dealer, the Antique Porcelain Company. Called the Joseph Duveen of antique porcelain, the late Hanns Weinberg founded his company in London in 1946 and soon opened galleries in New York and Zurich. The business is continued by Weinberg's granddaughter, Michelle Beiny Harkins, who started her own gallery in 1987. Harkins was in her early twenties when she sold Laurance Rockefeller a Meissen reticulated basket of flowers, circa 1755, that resold at Sotheby's for $30,000 ($9/10,000) including buyer's premium.

"All things go through waves of fashion, but Meissen birds have always been very desirable. Kaendler was just inspired when it came to these figures," says Harkins.

Sotheby's top price was $508,800 ($80/120,000), paid by an anonymous phone bidder for a pair of circa 1732 bantam cocks. The birds, each measuring roughly 71/2 by 91/2 inches, are thought to have been modeled by Kaendler after a Japanese Arita prototype and may have been made for the French market. A smaller pair is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

From The Antique Porcelain Company and attributed to Kaendler, a pair of circa 1750 Meissen herring gulls brought $192,000 ($20/30,000), again from an anonymous buyer. A pair of bitterns of the same date fetched $144,000 ($40/60,000) and an assembled pair of cockatoos mounted in ormolu sold for $132,000 ($60/80,000).

Of French Sevres manufacture and dating to1792-93, a 92-piece Beau Bleu armorial part-dinner service with ornithological decorations inspired by a French print source sold to Albert Amor Ltd, a London specialist in Eighteenth Century English porcelain, for $251,200 ($350/450,000). The service was originally commissioned by an Englishman, M. Sudell, and bears his family arms.

The other category of note was Chinese porcelain. From the estate of Martha Baird Rockefeller, the second wife and widow of John D. Rockefeller, Jr, two pairs of famille verte Kangxi candleholders fashioned as laughing boys, each one unique, charmed bidders. Both pairs sold anonymously: the first pair for $192,000 ($50/80,000), the second pair for $168,000 ($50/70,000).

Rare famille noire was all the rage among the wealthiest American collectors of the Edwardian age. In 1914, John D. Rockefeller, Jr, spent 72,000 pounds for 25 pieces of Chinese porcelain, most of it blue and white Hawthorn jars or famille noire.

Among nine lots of famille noire in the Laurance Rockefeller sale, a Qing dynasty yen-yen vase achieved $156,000 ($40/60,000). A pair of famille verte baluster vases left the block at $132,000 ($60/80,000) and a Tobacco Leaf soup tureen, cover and stand that once belonged to Nelson Rockefeller left the room at $30,000 ($15/20,000).

Twenty-seven Navajo rugs, some of which once ornamented the Rockefeller Plaza offices in New York, include a Second Phase man's wearing blanket, $132,000 ($60/90,000).

"The pieces that achieved the strongest prices were clearly the things that Mr Rockefeller felt strongly about, had a connection with and interested him the most," said Sotheby's specialist Elaine Whitmire, pronouncing the sale a success.