In 1996 the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized a panel discussion, “Picasso and the Art Market: Past, Present and Future.” Moderated by the Picasso scholar Michael FitzGerald, the participants were the art dealer Richard Gray, the Picasso biographer John Richardson, MOMA’s Director of Painting and Sculpture William S. Rubin, and Leonard A. Lauder, the cosmetics heir who died on June 14 at the age of ninety-two.
Truth to tell, at that time I was less aware than I should have been of Lauder’s activities as a collector. So when it emerged during the course of the discussion that he not only focused on one of my great interests, Cubism, but that his collection also contained a number of works once belonging to the late Douglas Cooper, I snapped to attention.
Cooper (1911–84), who was British, was one of the youngest collectors of Cubism. He bought his first work after coming into some money in the early 1930s and went forward focusing on work made by the movement’s four principals—Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris—during its formative years from 1907 to 1914. “At a time when prices had remained more or less stable since the end of World War I,” the New York Times art critic John Russell wrote in Cooper’s obituary, “he set about his ambition in systematic style and was able to acquire exceptional works by all four artists.”
Just as important, Cooper was one of the earliest British collectors of Picasso, an artist little regarded in Britain—along with modernism generally—until after World War II. About the only other person in England with a comparable appreciation of the Spaniard at the time was Cooper’s contemporary Roland Penrose (1900–84). Tate Britain’s Weeping Woman (1937), the artist’s portrait of Dora Maar and one of the greatest works to emerge from the Guernica campaign, came from his collection.
Cooper was equally notable as a scholar of the field, producing important publications from early on up to the end of his life (his catalogue raisonné of Juan Gris appeared in 1977), and organizing exhibitions such as the Met’s “The Cubist Epoch” in 1970 and the Tate’s “The Essential Cubism” in 1983.
When Cooper died, his adopted son, Billy McCarty-Cooper, inherited the collection, and it was sold a couple years after his death, in 1986, with Lauder ultimately acquiring twenty-two works. In 2013, Lauder gifted seventy-eight works to the Metropolitan Museum. Though the Met cannot be said to have been lacking in Picassos, or even important ones—the 1905–06 portrait of Gertrude Stein is only the most famous of them—the Lauder gift was transformational, instantly vaulting the museum’s holdings of this seminal episode of modern art to a position of parity with MOMA’s.
To celebrate the gift, in 2014 the Met organized “Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection.” Highlights from Cooper’s collection included Georges Braque’s Trees at Estaque (1908), a key work in understanding how Cubism evolved from Cézanne, Juan Gris’s Head of a Woman (1912), Fernand Léger’s The Tugboat (1918), and three important Picassos. These were Study for a Female Nude, made around the time of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) when, under the influence of tribal art, Picasso was formulating a new language of the figure, the monumental (literally—it’s three feet tall); the early Cubist Nude in an Armchair (1909); and Composition with Violin (1912), a Cubist collage of the utmost delicacy and poise. When, sitting in the Met’s auditorium, I learned that Lauder owned these and other masterworks, I knew I had to see them.
At the time, I was the executive editor of ARTNews magazine. So, to establish my bona fides, I wrote to him on letterhead (this was pre-email) explaining my interest and asking if I might pay a visit. (A few years hence, ahead of a trip to Dallas, I sent a similar letter to Raymond Nasher, the great collector of early twentieth-century sculpture. He kindly agreed, and I still remember what a shock it was to see a plaster cast of Brancusi’s The Kiss, from 1907–08, sitting in the middle of his dining-room table.)
In due course, I received a reply inviting me to appear at the residence at a specified time on a certain date. I had expected that someone on Lauder’s staff would chaperone me on my visit but to my surprise it was Lauder himself. Also on the tour was the Sotheby’s CEO Diana (Dede) Brooks, who four years later became embroiled in the Sotheby’s–Christie’s price-fixing scandal and narrowly escaped going to jail. A tall woman, she was dressed on this occasion in a Chanel suit that seemed to be one size too small.
Lauder began taking us around, and I was instantly reminded that there is nothing like looking at great works of art in a domestic setting, one reason no doubt that house museums remain so popular. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of relaxation peoples’ homes exude. Thus placed at your ease, you are able to connect with the works of art in a deeper way than is sometimes possible in the more formal setting of a museum.
So I should remember my visit down to the last detail. Alas, it remains a blur. Perhaps I was cowed by the presence of the great man or overwhelmed by the sheer number and quality of his artworks. Two moments do stand out, however. The first was when Lauder pointed to something and informed us, with a bright gleam in his eye, that he had paid a scandalously low price for it.
The second came near the end of our tour. I spotted something—my recollection is that it was a large Klimt landscape but I could be wrong—and told our host how much I liked it. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “I paid for that twice.”
What do you mean, I asked. He then explained that at some point in the recent past he’d been looking at it when he decided that, while he still liked it well enough, there were other things he wanted to buy—so he had decided to sell it. He called up a dealer, they agreed on a price, and arrangements were made to pick it up.
On the appointed day the art handlers were taking the painting off the wall when Lauder’s wife came home and asked what was going on. “Honey, I sold the picture” was the gist of her husband’s reply. This did not sit well with Mrs. Lauder, who apparently was very fond of the painting. It was duly returned to its place on the wall and the art handlers sent on their way. Lauder called the dealer to cancel the sale, but it was too late. The Klimt, or whatever it was, had already been sold. So Lauder had to buy it back—at more than he would have sold it for.
Surely a first in the annals of American art collecting.
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