FEATURES ARCHIVE

Assembled over more than four decades by Walter Shorenstein, the San Francisco real estate mogul, and Phyllis Shorenstein, founder of the city's Asian Art Museum, The Walter and Phyllis Shorenstein Collection unites the couple's individual passions for Impressionist paintings and fine Chinese glass, porcelain, jade and works of art.  Over 170 items from this exceptional private collection will be offered across nine sale categories this fall and in the spring of 2011, beginning with Christie’s major Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York on 3 November and Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art in Hong Kong on 1 December.

Best-known as a titan of San Francisco real estate, a lead fundraiser for the Democratic Party, and one of America’s wealthiest men, the late Walter H. Shorenstein is famously quoted as saying “I arrived in San Francisco with no job, a pregnant wife and less than $1,000 to my name.” After serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Shorenstein set about building a San Francisco real estate empire that by the mid-1980s had an estimated 10 million square feet of office and commercial real estate under management. His firm, the Shorenstein Company, developed many of the city’s most notable structures, including the landmark 52-story Bank of America building.

Throughout his life, Mr. Shorenstein was a steadfast supporter of the Democratic Party, and in 1997, he received the Democratic National Committee's Lifetime Achievement Award. Over the years, he served as an advisor to the administrations of U.S. Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. In 2009, the year prior to his death at the age of 95, he was named to Forbes magazine's list of the “400 Richest Americans”.

Outside the world of business and politics, Mr. and Mrs. Shorenstein developed an enduring interest in Asian, European and American Art and set about acquiring some the best examples of works available at the time.  Phyllis Shorenstein was a devoted collector of Japanese and Chinese works of art in particular, and had an unerring eye for exceptional quality and historical importance. Seeing a unique opportunity to develop San Francisco’s cultural heritage, Mrs. Shorenstein helped to found the city’s Asian Art Museum, which first opened in Golden Gate Park in 1966. She served as a board member for many years and was one of the museum's commissioners at the time of her death in 1994.

Of the many excellent examples of Impressionist painting in the Shorenstein Collection, a stand-out is La Seine à Argentueil, a magnificent 1882 work by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894). With its high-keyed color palette and dynamic compositional structure, this superb depiction of racing yachts on the Seine captures the essence of Impressionist technique and ranks among the finest of the artist’s many exquisite works. At the time of its painting, Caillebotte had traded the city streets of Paris for the idyllic landscapes of Argenteuil, where he could pursue his twin passions of painting and competitive sailing. The two sailboats at the center of the work, the red-hulled Inès and the bright yellow Condor, were both custom-built for Caillebotte, with the latter leading him to multiple victories in elite racing events.

Additional Impressionist masterworks from the Shorenstein Collection include Camille Pissarro’s Enfants attablés dans le jardin à Eragny, a harmonious late masterpiece depicting the artist’s three children against the sun-dappled backdrop of the great master’s garden at Eragny, and Georges Seurat’s Le Chemin creux, an important early landscape that was formerly in the collection of R.A. Peto, one of England’s most distinguished early collectors of Impressionist paintings.