Cat’s The Way to Do It: Bonhams to Sell ‘Significant’ Feline Art Collection

A Qing Dynasty snuff bottle, oil paintings by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, and a Diego Giacometti bronze are among the highlights of what is believed to be one of the world’s most significant private collections of cat-related art, collectibles, jewellery and home furnishings, which will be sold at Bonhams in New York City and Massachusetts later this year.

The Sandy Lerner Collection, put together by the American philanthropist and businesswoman Sandy Lerner, also includes pieces by Édouard Manet, Fernando Botero and Henri Matisse, as well as jewellery from Tiffany & Co and Boucheron. The collection will be dispersed across a series of four sales—two live, two online—comprising almost 1,000 lots.

Sandy Lerner was the co-founder of computer network specialist Cisco Systems and later set up beauty giant Urban Decay. An animal welfare campaigner, she introduced sustainable, humane farming practices to her estate, Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Virginia.

She was also a key figure behind the 1990s restoration of Jane Austen’s “Great House”, Chawton House in Hampshire, now a centre for the study of early women’s writing.

Lerner assembled her collection of feline art objects with the curatorial vision of celebrating the “joyful, life-affirming presence of cats”. She documented the collection of feline art objects in a 1987 book: Caticons: 4,000 Years of Art Imitating Cats.

Speaking about the sales, Lerner said: “These are objects I have personally chosen. They each had a place in my home, giving context and beauty as representatives of other lives and other times.

“They need to be rehomed, now, to others who will care for, cherish, and respect them as icons of the human achievement and… affection that created them.”

The first live auction, which will take place at Bonhams’ new US headquarters on West 57th Street in New York City on 30 September, will feature 66 lots. Japanese-French artist Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita’s oil paintings Chat et Chaton (1934) and Chaton (1926) are estimated at between $30,000–$50,000, while a Diego Giacometti bronze, Tête de Chat (1970) is estimated at $20,000–$30,000. The guide price for Henri Matisse’s Visages et Grenades (1952) is $10,000–$15,000.

The second phase of sales will take place in Massachusetts, beginning with a live auction of furniture, furnishings, decorative arts and paintings from Lerner’s Ayrshire Farm estate on 28 October. Notable lots include The Four-in-Hand, Hyde Park (late 19th century) by Albert Ludovici, estimated at $40,000–$60,000, and a pair of silver-gilt swan jardinieres by CJ Vander ($10,000–$20,000).

This will coincide with an online auction, running between 18–29 October.