Sotheby’s Paris will sell the collection of the illustrator Pierre Le-Tan, assembled over more than 40 years and kept in three small rooms of his Paris apartment. The sale comprises nearly 400 lots and runs in two sessions: the most important lots in the saleroom on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré on 16 March 2021, with an online session continuing through 17 March.
Pierre Le-Tan (1950 to 2019) made his name as a draughtsman at the age of nineteen with his covers for The New Yorker. He was the son of the painter Lê-Phô (1907 to 2001), a major Vietnamese painter who settled in France in 1937, and grew up in Paris among his father’s collections of paintings, drawings, furniture and Asian and Western objects. He continued collecting throughout his life, having already consigned his post-war art collection to Sotheby’s London in 1995, and made his last purchases only days before his death at the age of 70.
Le-Tan features in the sale as an artist in his own right. His drawings, made only on commission or for friends, are rare on the market, and the 40 works included across the two sessions form a notable event. His style is built from fine parallel and crossed lines in India ink, sometimes heightened with watercolour, creating a melancholy world nostalgic for an era he never truly knew.
Among his works are his The New Yorker cover of a rainbow seen from a window, published 18 August 1977, offered on 16 March with an estimate of 10,000 to 15,000 euros, and an emblematic composition of a young woman seen from behind on a bench looking toward the Eiffel Tower, estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 euros. A late drawing from 2018 depicting a marble Hercules attributed to Juste Le Court is estimated at 5,000 to 7,000 euros. Portraits of writers and artists he admired include Tennessee Williams, estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 euros, and Francis Bacon, estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 euros.
The collection also offers about a dozen paintings, oils and gouaches by his father, Lê-Phô, regarded as perhaps the most important modern Vietnamese artist, who trained under Victor Tardieu at the École des Beaux-Arts in Hanoi. They include a Vierge à l’enfant, estimated at 50,000 to 70,000 euros, and a rare 1928 self-portrait, Autoportrait dans la forêt, estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 euros, which had remained in the family since its creation.
Many objects reflect Le-Tan’s wide-ranging taste. They include a pair of shoes modelled as bare feet, designed by Pierre Cardin in the 1980s, estimated at 800 to 1,200 euros; a 19th century wooden box lined with canary-yellow sulphur crystals, estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 euros; a marble statue of Hercules attributed to Juste Le Court (1627 to 1679), estimated at 30,000 to 50,000 euros; and a portrait of Le-Tan sketched by David Hockney over a dinner at La Coupole on 20 June 1974, estimated at 30,000 to 50,000 euros. Other lots reflect his admirations, from a Christian Bérard self-portrait and two Jean Cocteau drawings of his dog to a group of 16th century Iznik tiles and Le-Tan’s collection of Islamic carpets.
(Press Release)
