It also contained works by such Washington Color School painters as Paul Reed and Thomas Downing. There were even watercolors by Ernst Beyeler, a renowned art dealer who, Hattis says, would do his own paintings when he came to visit them at their house in southern France. “He was a good friend of both of ours,” she says. “He leaned on Bill, and Bill leaned on him.”
Art continued to cycle on and off the walls. “There were artists that we don’t have in the house anymore, but that’s just because the collection changes somewhat,” Hattis says. “There were times where we had to raise some money and sell the art.”
They sold what Hattis describes as a “tribal masterpiece,” for instance, in order to build the house’s indoor swimming pool, which is situated in a vaulted, glass-walled room.
The couple also entertained often, welcoming artists (including Frank Stella) colleagues (including Kirk Varnedoe, who succeeded Rubin in his position at MoMA) and friends (including Leon Black and Ronald Lauder) for what Hattis describes as informal lunches and dinners.
A $50,000 Tree
Crucially, Hattis says, Rubin spent as much time working on the house’s landscaping as he did its interior. “We embraced a home that is both exciting from the indoors, looking out, and the outdoors, looking in,” she says, “and then we enhanced both of those perspectives.”
The landscaping, she explains, is such that “every view from the house has a special tree and a rare combination of foliage and greens.”
Rubin, she says, “would hunt for trees like he would hunt for rare works of art; he had the eye of a connoisseur.” A particularly choice Japanese Maple, she says, “had the most exquisite trunk and cost $50,000.” Most people, Hattis says, “don’t really spend that much on a tree, but he had to have things that were so beautiful and rare that he reached for it. He loved to create paradises.”
Eventually, Rubin began to spend up to four days a week at the property, “driving down for concerts.” After he died, Hattis discovered that she was visiting the property less frequently. “I have a big home in the south of France,” she says, “and I’m spending more and more time there.”
Now, she says, she’s “biting the bullet” and putting the house on the market, “a very hard decision to make.” The art that remains on the walls may be “incorporated into the collection” that’s in her New York apartment. Or maybe, she continues, “it will find a new home one day.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.