Displaying items by tag: rachel lambert mellon

Works from the life estate of Paul Mellon, longtime VMFA donor and trustee, are in the newly reinstalled Mellon Galleries, opening on Friday, January 16. The galleries have been closed for six months to protect the art during a roof replacement. Eleven works have been reframed as a part of the ongoing Mellon reframing project.

The life estate remained with Mellon’s widow, Rachel Lambert Mellon, until her death on March 17, 2014. Mrs. Mellon held a life estate in 26 works of art originally bequeathed to VMFA in 1999 by Mr. Mellon. Among the highlights are six masterworks by Degas, Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat, Dufy, and van Dongen.

Few people have ever visited Oak Spring Farms, the grand home here of Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny. If they had, they would have seen a Pissarro, unframed like a flea market find, above the living room fireplace. Upstairs, a still life by van Gogh hung above her bathtub. Antique porcelains — cabbages, asparagus, artichokes — were artfully arranged on practically every surface.

Mrs. Mellon was the matriarch of an American dynasty whose fortune and art holdings rivaled that of the Fricks, Carnegies and Morgans. But perhaps most notably, she was a passionate collector of a bygone era. She didn’t pay attention to what was in fashion; she didn’t think about future financial returns.

Ever since Rachel Lambert Mellon died in March at the age of 103, the art world has been wondering what would become of the vast treasures of art and objects that she and her husband, Paul Mellon, had collected and lived with.

On Tuesday, Sotheby’s announced that it had landed the sale of the estate of Mrs. Mellon, winning it over its rival Christie’s. The auctions, starting in November, will be among the most highly anticipated sales from a fabled family collection, with more than $100 million of art, jewelry, furniture and decorative objects. Proceeds will benefit the Gerald B. Lambert Foundation, a charitable entity established by Mrs. Mellon, known as Bunny, in memory of her father. The foundation supports the Oak Spring Garden Library, Mrs. Mellon’s celebrated collection of rare books, manuscripts, works of art and artifacts relating to horticulture, landscape design and natural history.

The final group of paintings, drawings and sculptures bequeathed to museums by Paul Mellon before his death in 1999 have at last begun to arrive. Hidden away for decades, many are rarities that had never been seen by curators.

The group includes more than 200 works — examples by such artists as van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Monet and Seurat — that were only recently removed from the walls of the Mellons’ many homes, where they were enjoyed by his widow, Rachel Lambert Mellon, who died in March at 103.