PARIS.- Christie's announced the sale of the Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares Collection, happening in Paris on 23 September. Over more than four decades, Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares employed her refined taste and erudite knowledge to build a collection that would leave an indelible mark on history. Heir to one of the fortunes that would become legend in Latin America and a glittering figure of Paris in the 1920s, Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares' collecting style was a combination of intuition, enlightened vision and rigour. In one of the most beautiful private mansions on Avenue Foch, she brought together a group of works worthy of the greatest museums Masterpieces by Watteau and Fragonard stand alongside classical furniture at its apogee and a magnificent collection of silver. Comprising 60 lots with an overall estimate of €23–33 million, the sale will take its place in a long line of historic auctions devoted to the classical arts; following those of Hubert de Givenchy's Hôtel d'Orrouer and the Rothschild family's Château de Ferrières, this is the next auction to celebrate the pinnacle of taste achieved by collectors living in legendary residences.
Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares (1900-1980)
While Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares' grace and elegance were preserved for posterity in portraits by great European artists like Salvador Dalí and by Philip Alexius de László, her family history began in the Andes. Graziella was the daughter of the Bolivian Don Simón Iturri Patiño (1860–1947). Born into modest circumstances, he realised early on the huge value of tin and, through perseverance and a keen sense of business, built a mining, banking, and railway empire. He became known as the “Tin King” or the “Rockefeller of the Andes” and made a significant contribution to the economic development of his country.
Simón Patiño later settled in Europe with his family, and it was Paris that Graziella and her husband Jorge Ortiz de Linares, Minister Plenipotentiary of Bolivia, chose to make their home. The elegant, cultured couple were prominent figures of Parisian society in the “Roaring Twenties”, taking up residence in one of the most sumptuous private mansions on Avenue Foch. Under their influence, number 34 became one of the epicentres of Paris's cultural and intellectual scene. Within this private mansion, Graziella and her husband, himself an eminent collector of rare books, assembled a collection that would become one of the most prestigious of the 20th century.
34 Avenue Foch: A Worthy Setting for the Collection
Originally a suptuous architectural project of Second Empire, the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, renamed Avenue Foch in 1929, was created at the demand of Empress Eugénie. From its inception, it attracted figures of high society such as Adolphe d'Ennery or Boni de Castellane and his wife Anna Gould. The magnificence of the private mansions they built there is legendary and has cemented its reputaion amongst the world's elite. In 1926, Simón Iturri Patiño acquired the mansion at number 34 for his daughter Graziella and her husband Jorge Ortiz Linares. Ferdinand Blumenthal, a wealthy New York industrialist, had built the hôtel, which bore his name, in 1900. Endowed with unparalleled prestige, this imposing neoclassical residence offered the young Ortiz Linares couple the ideal setting for their collection centred on the Régence period and the reign of Louis XV, which they assembled over more than forty years. From 1926 onward, Graziella devoted herself to the arrangement of the reception rooms. The private spaces would have to wait until the end of the Second World War. In her relentless pursuit of perfection, Graziella sought advice from the foremost antiquarians of her time: Maison Jansen, the decorator established on rue Royale; Jacques Helft, regarded as the absolute authority in the field of silver; the antiquarian Marcel Bissey; and the Matthiesen gallery for Old Master paintings. In 1938, as part of this complete renovation of the hotel, she had white and gold wood panelling installed, sourced from the French Embassy in Vienna, which had been built for Cardinal de Rohan, along with Louis XV fireplaces. The interiors were further embellished with precious Chinese lacquerware, rare chiselled bronzes, Savonnerie tapestries and exceptional furniture.
The Greatest Names
The collection assembled by Graziella and Jorge Ortiz Linares is among the most remarkable ever devoted to the decorative arts and Old Master painting, certain of which have already entered the collections of major museums. The sale at Christie's on the 23 September brings together a group of masterpieces by the greatest French painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Antoine Le Nain, Jean‑Antoine Watteau, Jean‑Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert, and Jean Baptiste Greuze. Often of distinguished provenance, these works, displayed across their various properties on Avenue Foch and at their Château du Moulinet in the Yvelines, echo the finest examples by these artists preserved in the Louvre. Among an ensemble of decorative arts and furniture of exceptional quality are works by André‑Charles Boulle, Charles Cressent, and Bernard II van Risamburgh (B.V.R.B.). The sale also offers a resplendent celebration of silverware, notably through pieces of French royal silver by Thomas and François‑Thomas Germain, as well as works by Nicolas Delaunay and Pierre Massé. These works, collected with passion, for the most part in New York in the 1940s, are one of the great prides of a fmaily whose history is so intimately linked to metal and metalwork. They also established Graziella Patiño de Ortiz Linares as one of the greatest collectors of French silver in history, alongside families such as the Rothschilds, the David‑Weills, and the López‑Willshaw. The sale thus complements a rich cultural moment in Paris, where the art of living during the Age of Enlightenment is currently being celebrated, notably at the Palais Galliera and the Musée des Arts décoratifs.
“Remarkable in its coherence, the Patiño de Ortiz Linares Collection brilliantly reflects the discernment and sensitivity of a great collector. Each work finds its place within a dialogue of rare elegance.” --- Paul Gallois, Co‑Director of the Sale, Head of Furniture and Decorative Arts, Europe
“Jean‑Honoré Fragonard was a natural choice for Graziella, because he is the artist who most vividly, and with the greatest virtuosity, embodies this elegance of line, this painterly ease which here, in a sensual subject, is placed entirely at the service of pleasure, the pleasure of the painter, and the pleasure of the collector.”
Pierre Étienne, Co‑Director of the Sale and Vice‑President of Christie's France
Further detailed information on the works offered in the sale will be released over the course of June.
A selection of works from the collection will be previewed from May onwards in several cities around the world, offering an international audience a striking insight into this extraordinary collection.
• New York tour from May 1 to 12
• Hong Kong tour from May 21 to 27
• London tour from June 26 to July 3
• Sale in Paris on September 23 at 4 p.m.
