Cassatt, Degas, Renoir: Armand Hammer's more than $25-million private art collection arrives at Sotheby's L.A.
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Set us as preferred Angelenos recognize Armand Hammer as the founder and namesake of Westwood’s Hammer Museum.New Yorkers associate him with Hammer Galleries, specializing in impressionism and modern art.
(Pop culture aficionados may know his great-grandson is Armie Hammer.) No matter what you know about the 20th century oil tycoon, you likely associate him with art.Now, a dozen pieces from Hammer’s private collection are set to be auctioned by Sotheby’s, with highlights — including Mary Cassatt’s “Summertime,” Edgar Degas’ “Trois danseuses (Jupes jaunes)” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Antibes” — on preview at Sotheby’s Los Angeles from Wednesday through Friday.(The sale will begin in New York in November.)Hammer moved to Los Angeles in 1956 at the age of 58 with plans to retire, but instead invested $50,000 into two wildcat oil wells owned by Occidental Petroleum (at the time nearly bankrupt), and the rest is monied history.
His last public appearance was at a party celebrating the opening of the Hammer Museum in 1990.“Armand Hammer’s imprint on Los Angeles is difficult to overstate,” the head of Sotheby’s L.A.office, Jacqueline Wachter, said in a news release.
“He believed that collecting art came with an obligation to share it, a conviction that shaped not only his own museum but decades of gifts to institutions across this city and beyond.Long before Los Angeles was recognized as a global capital for art, Hammer was already insisting that world-class painting belonged here.”Among the selection of 12 works, estimated to be worth $25 million to $37 million, Cassatt’s “Summertime,” painted between 1894-95, stands out.
It does so literally: full of light, sumptuous, in clear conversation with Cassatt’s French impressionist contemporaries (she was the only American and one of ...