After collecting art in secret for 60 years, French actor Alain Delon will sell his collection this month at Bonhams in Paris. The sale could bring in as much as €5 million. Delon is one of France's most famous and well-known actors. He is best known for his roles in neo-noir classics like The Leopard (1963) and The Samurai (1967). Anouchka Delon, who is also an actress, says that her father has been planning for years to sell his collection while he is still alive. She says that her 87-year-old father is still in good health and wants to "feel the excitement of giving all this away to new owners." "At first, people are very surprised that he's selling everything, but they're happy to see the work because most people know him as an actor, but this is an art collection," says Anouchka. "Maybe they'll feel the same way he might have felt when looking at one of those paintings or drawings." She compared the sale to when Delon and his family went to the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, where Delon got an honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime success. At the time, Delon's comments about women and France's far-right politics were causing a lot of trouble, so she compared the sale to that. Anouchka says that so many artists don't get to see things like that before they die. "It was really important to both him and us."
The painting La baie de Sainte-Adresse (1906) by Raoul Dufy, which shows a beach scene, is expected to sell for between €600,000 and €800,000. Anouchka says that the ocean "shows a lot about France." Bonhams thinks that a Rembrandt Bugatti panther sculpture will sell for between €250,000 and €300,000. This is one of Delon's favorite things in his collection. Anouchka says that French media often show Delon as a lion or a panther. Delon's art collection also has many pieces that show big cats. Edgar Degas's picture of a ballet dancer hung in Anouchka's childhood bedroom, she says. It is expected that the drawing will sell for between €80,000 and €120,000. "It felt like I was living in a museum," she says. "My father and I both love art, and we both learned a lot from each other. It was an honor to get these."
Anouchka says that Delon picked "his art with his heart" and that he didn't think of his collection as a way to make money or as part of what was in style. Anouchka says that her father started collecting Dutch art after his wife and her mother, a model from the Netherlands named Rosalie van Breemen, showed him some. He liked Jan van Goyen's (1596-1656) landscape paintings, of which there are three in the sale. "Our dad loves these pictures. I know Holland because of its small houses. "You can feel the mist and the cold," says Anouchka, pointing to a drawing by Van Goyen of a man steering a boat through a village canal. Bonhams says the drawing is worth between €30,000 and €50,000. The sale of 84 items will take place on June 22 at Bonhams' salesroom in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It is expected to bring in between €4m and €5m.
Selena Mattei