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Rockefeller Treasures Set Record at Auction

by Associated Press

   NEW YORK --

   Peggy and David Rockefeller's lavish artworks and other treasures set a
   new world record this week at a Christie's auction, topping $800
   million as the priciest single-owner collection.

   That's about twice the previous record of $484 million from a 2009
   Paris sale of designer Yves Saint Laurent's estate.

   The three-day live sale of the late couple's belongings ended Thursday
   with a $115 million star lot -- a Picasso painting called "Fillette a
   la corbeille fleurie" of a naked girl holding a basket of flowers that
   once belonged to the writer Gertrude Stein, estimated to be worth $100
   million. The runner-up, at $84 million, was a Monet canvas with his
   famed water lilies, "Nimpheas en fleur," which surpassed its $50
   million estimate and set a record for his art at auction against a
   previous high of $81 million.

   Matisse's "Odalisque Couchee aux Magnolias," depicting a woman in a
   Turkish harem, sold for $80.8 million, topping the $70 million estimate
   and setting a new record for a Matisse, whose highest price at auction
   had been $48.8 million.

   'Rockefeller Mania

   In what one art publication dubbed "Rockefeller Mania," Christie's said
   100 percent of the 893 Rockefeller lots offered live had sold, for a
   total of $828 million, as well as all of the more than 600 lots sold
   online for $4.6 million.

   Diego Rivera's 1931 "The Rivals" went for the highest price ever paid
   for a Latin American artwork on the block, $9.8 million against a
   pre-auction estimate of $5 million to $7 million.

   On Friday, the sale wasn't over until the online-only bids were in.
   Anyone with a few hundred dollars could go for a piece of the opulence
   that surrounded the late Rockefeller couple, by bidding on, say,
   cufflinks or jewelry. A 14-carat gold money clip once filled with
   Rockefeller cash sold for $75,000 against an estimate of $800 to
   $1,200.

   Eclectic tastes

   The total 1,564 Rockefeller lots reflected the couple's eclectic tastes
   in everything from fine furniture, porcelain and ceramics to duck
   decoys and blue-chip art that graced their various properties and
   David's bank office. Paintings filled the walls of their Maine home,
   their Manhattan townhouse and a country mansion in the Pocantino Hills
   north of the city, complete with horses and cows.

   For a whiff of that life, buyers were willing to pay prices way above
   the pre-auction estimates.

   A rare Chinese blue and white "dragon" bowl from the Maine kitchen
   cabinet, valued at up to $150,000, went for $2.7 million. A bronze
   figure of the Buddhist deity Amitayus realized $2.5 million, against a
   $600,000 high estimate.

   A 256-piece Sevres dessert service commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte
   sold for $1.8 million -- more than six times its high estimate.

   Six George III "Gothick" Windsor Armchairs sold for $336,500 against a
   top estimate of $80,000, and an English wicker picnic hamper soared to
   $212,500, against a high estimate of $10,000.

   'Proceeds go to charity

   All prices include buyers' premiums. Christie's bolstered the auction
   by guaranteeing the whole Rockefeller collection, not disclosing the
   minimum price at which a work would have to sell or buyers' names. Many
   came from abroad, drawn to the New York power name that dominated the
   city's privileged, philanthropic society for a century.

   Peggy died in 1996, and David in 2017, as the last surviving grandson
   of the oil baron John D. Rockefeller. The couple's son, David
   Rockefeller Jr., said auction proceeds would go to charity.

   The collection ended up, appropriately, in Rockefeller Center off Fifth
   Avenue where Christie's is located. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had helped
   finance and build the grand complex in the 1930s.