Twenty-five years ago in Rome, a man lugged a painting in a rubbish bag up a flight of stairs and sold it for $5.5m.
The painting was a lavish 17th-century still life by Jan Davidsz de Heem, in immaculate condition despite its mode of transport. The seller, an Italian man who did not want his wife to know he owned it, nor that he was selling it. And the buyers? Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders, ardent US collectors who had flown in over Thanksgiving to see the painting, along with their adviser George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master paintings.
The De Heem, now estimated to sell for between $8m and $12m, is one of around 60 Old Master paintings dating from the 16th to 19th century from the Saunders’ collection that will be sold at Sotheby’s in New York on 21 and 22 May. Guaranteed by Sotheby’s for a total estimated value of between $80m and $120m, it is the most valuable single owner collection of Old Master paintings ever to appear at auction. That accolade is currently held by the sale of 11 works from the Fisch Davidson collection at Sotheby’s New York in 2023 , sold for $76m (including fees) as part of lengthy divorce proceedings between the real estate entrepreneur and Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee Mark Fisch and his estranged wife, Rachel Davidson.
Thomas and Jordan Saunders
Courtesy of Sotheby's
Thomas Saunders, a philanthropist and shrewd businessman who spent over 20 years at Morgan Stanley as a partner and managing director, died in 2022 aged 86. Last year, his wife, Jordan, sold decorative arts and furniture from her Manhattan apartment in another single owner sale at Sotheby’s, and now come the paintings. They have been on view since 2022 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), in an extended exhibition titled Elegance and Wonder: Masterpieces of European Art from the Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III Collection. The reason for selling comes down to inheritance planning—the Saunders have a number of grandchildren among whom to split funds.
“We really started working together after January 1998, which is when Jordan saw [the businessman and philanthropist] Mike Hornstein’s beautiful Francesco Guardi [at Sotheby’s],” Wachter tells The Art Newspaper. "I can still feel the tingling sensation,” Jordan Saunders says in the Sotheby’s press release. “There it was—the View of the Isola della Giudecca (around 1757-58), a small painting by Guardi. It was a little jewel, and all afternoon, I kept coming back to visit it…Perhaps you’ll think me crazy, but I swear I heard that little picture speak to me, ‘please buy me, buy me’.”
The couple subsequently went on a buying spree with Wachter’s guidance through 1998, 1999 and 2000—their new triplex apartment on Park Avenue had walls to fill. “They gave me the idea that I should be looking around the world for paintings for them,” Wachter tells The Art Newspaper. “They bought a lot from Sotheby’s, a lot privately, they bought things from Christie’s which I told them they should buy, like the little Canaletto. But a lot of the greatest things—the De Heem, the Frans Post, the Hornstein pictures—all were private sales and all were found over that three year period.”
Gory crucifixion scenes were not for the Saunders. “They liked beautiful portraits, views of Venice and pretty still lifes,” Wachter says. And they had considerable spending power, accumulating the selection at Sotheby’s but also underbidding such notable works as the Portrait of the Man as Mars (around 1620) by Rubens, which sold for $7.5m [including fees] at Sotheby’s in 2000.
Thomas Saunders was particularly fascinated by a view of the Brazil by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Post, painted after he went to Brazil as part of an entourage of poets, architects and artists. The picture had been found, filthy and blackened by soot, in a barn in Connecticut and was offered to the Saunders via the dealer Peter Nahum. “That was incredible—I cannot tell you how filthy it was,” Wachter says. “But I had a strong feeling—it was big, the quality looked great, you could see enough with a little white spirit. And I convinced them to buy it—$2.2m in 1998, so it wasn’t cheap. And then [the renowned conservator] Nancy Krieg opened a little window in the sky and it was bright blue, like you see it now.”
View of the Town of Olinda with Ruins of the Jesuit Church, the River Bibaribe in the Distance (1665) by Frans Post
Courtesy of Sotheby's
View of the Town of Olinda with Ruins of the Jesuit Church, the River Bibaribe in the Distance (1665) by Post is estimated to sell for between $6m to $8m—the highest estimate ever placed on a work by Post, whose auction estimate was set in 1997 at Sotheby’s for $4.5m.
“Paintings by Post are very rare at auction—there hasn’t been a work by Post of this quality and condition in my entire time at Sotheby’s,” says Elisabeth Lobkowicz, a director and specialist in the Old Master paintings department at Sotheby's, London.
“The thing that unites all of the paintings is that they really are the very best examples of their type, and they’re in almost perfect condition—they’re almost spotless under black light and, in a large collection like this, you just don’t see that,” Lobkowicz says. “The other uniting characteristic is the high level of observation, whether that’s the observation of people, or flowers, or Venice.”
Wachter’s personal pick of the collection is an unusual Still life with Cauliflower, Basket of Fish, Eggs, and Leeks, and Kitchen Utensils (late 1760s) by the Spanish painter Luis Meléndez, again from the Hornstein collection (estimate $5m to $8m). The painting was bought on an impromptu trip to Montreal to see the collection in 1999—the Saunders bought seven other paintings on the spot, but only on the agreement that Hornstein would also sell them this Meléndez, which was not part of the selection they were originally offered.
Michal Hornstein, who was born in Poland in 1920 and died in 2016, narrowly escaped Auschwitz concentration camp by jumping off a train and going into hiding for the rest of the war. He made his fortune in real estate and notably donated 75 Old Masters, worth around $75m, to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2012. Hornstein’s reasons for selling these paintings remain a mystery to Wachter: “He was so rich, he didn’t need the money. I’ll never understand why he sold them. The only thing he cared about was that whoever he sold them to wasn’t going to turn around and sell them straight away.”
Other pictures bought from Hornstein include Gerrit Dou’s Man Writing in an Artist's Studio (1631-32, est $5m-$7m), Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Miss Julia Peel (1827, est $6m-$8m) and a pair of Frans Hals portraits, A Boy Playing the Violin and A Girl Singing (around 1628, est $6m-$8m), painted in the mid-to-late 1620s. “The Frans Hals portraits are so fresh and you don’t normally see this diamond format, and I love the thought that these two children are possibly his children, Sara and Frans,” Lobkowicz says. “You can really see the confidence that Hals has by the 1620s, when he’d already done all his major portrait commissions.”
On deciding estimates, Wachter says: “To start with, we had a lot of private offers over the years—around $9m on the [Salomon van] Ruysdael, one of around $8m on the Meléndez, and about $10m on the Post. We always said no, but that sort of coloured the estimates, along with auction values. There have been a few Meléndez paintings come up for between $6m-$8m, so $5m to $7m seemed normal to me.”
“It’s full circle” Wachter says of his feelings about selling this collection. “My whole career here I’ve had a way of thinking which is this: ‘if you want to give a work to a museum, wonderful. But if you’re going to sell it, I want to do it.’ I feel proud of this collection I helped build—it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done at Sotheby’s.”
Highlights from the collection of Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III are on view at Sotheby’s London from today until 4 March.
