Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”

Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying.