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Greenwich Connecticut’s Bruce Museum’s highest member donor
group, The Robert Bruce Circle is co-chaired by Tamara
Holliday and art collector Michel Cox Witmer. The Bruce
Circle along with The Directors of Sotheby’s Impressionist,
Modern
and Contemporary Art Departments, hosted an evening of
cocktails, dinner and a private viewing of Sotheby’s sale of
Impressionist and Modern Art.
The main attraction were the 76 works of art on display. The
lots were auctioned off a few days later for $270 million.
The highlights
included paintings by Schiele, Pissarro, Signac, Monet,
Picasso, Chagall, Ernst and Dali. There was Vincent van
Gogh’s
“The Fields,” about which, David Norman (Sotheby’s Executive
Vice President, Co-Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art
Worldwide) explained: “This was his last painting, completed
in 1890, 2 weeks before he shot himself in the chest in that
very
wheat field. Although mortally wounded, Vincent got back to
his room. His landlady called his brother Theo who came down
from Paris. The painting hung over the artist’s bed. The
brothers sat in the room for a day and a half before Vincent
expired.”
Norman also told a story about Paul Gauguin’s “Te Poipoi,”
which was hung across the room. “Painted in 1892, it was one
of the
first paintings Gaugin did in Tahiti. It captures the
morning rituals of the women who are wearing sarongs with
fabrics woven in
Europe - a mixture of European and Tahitian symbols. Gauguin
sold it in Paris in 1895 to raise more money for supplies
before
he returned to Tahiti. “”Te Poipoi” sold for $39,241,000 to
Joseph Lau of Hong Kong).
The 99 year old Greenwich museum’s CEO Peter Sutton, talked
about the level of art appreciation in that fair city: “One
of the
remarkable resources of Greenwich and its environs is the
quality and depth of its private art collections, which has
inspired our
museum’s current exhibition: “Contemporary and Cutting Edge:
Pleasures of Collecting Part III.” A delicious 3 course meal
followed and then more time to peruse the paintings on
display. For more information please visit:
www.brucemuseum.org
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