London
Two great names from the heady days of the 1980s art world died recently. Ryoei Saito, chief of the Daishowa Paper Company, Fuji City, and owner of the world’s two most expensive paintings sold at auction (Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr Gachet”, bought at Christie’s in 1990 for $82.5 million and Renoir’s “Au moulin de la Galette”, bought for $78.1 million), died of a stroke in a Tokyo hospital on 30 May aged seventy-nine. He achieved further fame in May 1990 when he stated that he was considering burning the two paintings as part of his cremation. He subsequently denied that this was his intention. On 15 April Stavros Niarchos, shipping millionaire and art collector, died aged eighty-six. Almost no one has seen the collection of this reclusive Greek, but it is known to include works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Picasso and Cézanne, as well as Old Masters including a great El Greco Pietà. His purchase of the Edward G.Robinson collection of paintings cost $2.5 million in the late 1950s. In 1989 he paid $47.85 million for Picasso’s “Yo Picasso”. His net worth has been estimated at $5 billion. His Paris home was the eighteenth-century hôtel de Chanalleiles, once presented by Louis XIV to his son the duc de Maine.
