When David Rockefeller’s estate sold at Christie’s New York earlier this year, the allure of “living like a Rockefeller” induced eager collectors to spend wild sums. Porcelain figures estimated to sell for a few thousand sold for five times that amount, while porcelain dishes (there was a lot of porcelain) estimated in the thousands sold for millions.
Now, Christie’s rival Sotheby’s is hoping that there’s some Rockefeller magic left over.
Starting on Nov. 13, the auction house will sell hundreds of pieces of furniture, art, decorations, and jewelry from Nelson and Happy Rockefeller’s estate. Nelson, a former vice president and governor of New York, died in 1979; his widow Happy died in 2015.
The 450-odd lots have been parceled out three segments. The first will be a dedicated auction of 20th century design, impressionist, modern, and contemporary art from the couple’s Fifth Avenue apartment; the second, comprising Happy’s jewelry, will be included in the auction house’s Dec. 4 “Magnificent Jewels” auction; and the third, which contains the remainder of their furniture and decorative arts objects, will be integrated into Sotheby’s American Week auctions in January 2019.
In total, the lots from the estate carry an overall estimate “in excess of $8 million,” according to the auction house.
While that estimate might be considered aggressively modest, considering the gangbuster results from Christie’s earlier this year, it’s important to remember that not all Rockefeller sales are alike. While David’s was billed as a sort of total liquidation—the most lavish “everything must go” sale in history—the upcoming sale at Sotheby’s is a much smaller grouping.
Buying and Selling
Nelson Rockefeller began to pare down, or at the very least, monetize his belongings well before his death.
A 1978 article in the Washington Post detailed some of his efforts: “After a lifetime of buying art and architecture, former vice president Nelson Rockefeller is now selling it—with all the money, energy and enthusiasm he once put into building his collection.” There was an enterprise known simply as “The Nelson Rockefeller Collection” in which he made about 100 reproductions of his interior decorations, then sold them for from $75 to $7,500 a pop; an auction of some of of the furniture and art once housed in the couple’s Washington, New York, and Maine residences; and the sale of both the Washington and Maine properties. In a 1978 article regarding the $1 million Maine retreat in the New York Times, the Rockefellers’ real estate agent explained that they were selling because they haven’t “spent more than a weekend a year here for the last 20 years.”
There was even an exhibition of the Rockefellers’ so-called “primitive art collection” in none other than a Neiman Marcus store in Dallas, according to the Washington Post article. Then, just months after Nelson’s death, the Times reported that Christie, Manson & Woods in New York had auctioned: a bracelet, consigned by his estate, that sold for $220,000, a necklace, for $350,000, and a ring, for $95,000. A year later came a massive estate auction of his belongings.
So while Happy Rockefeller was hardly living in austere circumstances at the time of her death, the estate had been streamlined. “We think of it as, ‘What did Happy choose to live with after his death?” says Nina Del Rio, the vice chairman at Sotheby’s.