A second group of artworks from the collection of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his auction-house-owning partner Pierre Berge is expected to fetch up to 4 million euros ($5.7 million) when it appears for sale in November. Berge and Saint Laurent built up one of the world’s biggest and most important private art collections over some five decades but Berge decided to sell it all after Saint Laurent died in June 2008 at the age of 71.
Christie’s International’s YSL Part II sale, held in collaboration with Pierre Berge and Associates, will take place at its Paris auction rooms on November 17, 18 and 19, the London-based company said today in an e-mailed statement.
Almost 1,200 pieces will be offered, about half of them from the couple’s coastal retreat, Chateau Gabriel, at Benerville near Deauville in Normandy. As well as modern art and Old Master pictures and drawings by artists including Picasso, Fernand Leger and Miro, the sale in Paris will include furniture and various Art Deco objects that decorated the sumptuous rooms of Saint Laurent’s chateau (pictured above and below). Proceeds of the sale will benefit HIV research and the fight against Aids, said Christie’s.
All of the more valuable works from the collection — including a 1.1-million-euro Edward Burne-Jones painting that hung in the living room of Chateau Gabriel — were sold in Christie’s record-breaking Saint Laurent sale at the Grand Palais in Paris in February, said the auction house. The total of 342.5 million euros was the highest ever achieved at auction for a private art collection.
“This is my haven between two storms,” Yves Saint Laurent, who died in June 2008, said of Chateau Gabriel in an e-mailed Christie’s statement. “I come here to rebuild my strength.”
Saint Laurent and Berge bought the 19th-century seaside mansion in the early 1980s. It was decorated by interior designer Jacques Grange in an opulent, fin-de-siecle style inspired by Marcel Proust’s novel “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.”
A pair of late-19th-century bronze stands from Saint Laurent’s bedroom, named after the novel’s character Charles Swann, carry a high estimate of 50,000 euros. A similarly dated Dutch copper ceiling light from Chateau Gabriel’s entrance hall is expected to fetch at least 70,000 euros.
The three-day auction includes modern works from Saint Laurent and Berge’s Paris apartments. Fernand Leger’s 1950 gouache “Les travailleurs au repos” is the most highly valued work in the sale at 80,000 euros to 120,000 euros.
The last car owned by the designer is also coming under the hammer. His black Mercedes Benz S Class 350L, dating from 2007, has a top estimate of 50,000 euros.
Christie’s and Pierre Berge had always envisaged that the Saint Laurent auction would be held in two parts, Jonathan Rendell, deputy chairman, Christie’s Americas, said in a telephone interview.
“The second sale is about the house in Normandy and the other contents of the Paris apartments,” Rendell said. “The vast majority of things are estimated at less than 10,000 euros. It’s much more approachable and personal.” There were currently no plans for a Saint Laurent III auction, he said. “This is it.”
