Pierre Le-Tan

This upright piano was originally commissioned as part of a larger playroom suite created by Pierre Le-Tan (1950-2019) and sold by Sotheby's New York in December 2019. A celebrated painter, illustrator and designer, Le-Tan worked across a variety of mediums to create a unique visual style that relied on simple and gentle lines to create fully-realized fantaisies. He is perhaps best known for his New Yorker cover illustrations, his long-term collaboration with Patrick Modiano, and set designs for film and theater. He also created furniture pieces in very limited number and rarely gave a flesh to the enigmatic interiors that he laid out on paper.

The genesis of the playroom suite from which the present lot originated can be traced to Reed Krakoff’s professional collaboration with Le-Tan, who had been hired by luxury fashion company Coach to create illustrations. Commissioned directly from the Krakoffs in 2006 for their children’s bedroom in their Manhattan home, the suite was created over a six-month period in the artist’s Paris studio, after which the pieces were immediately sent to New York for installation. 

This piece represents one of Pierre Le-Tan’s latest commissions, in the lineage of other creations specifically made for esteemed clients. Such projects include the design of furniture for his daughter Olympia’s showroom in Paris in 2014 and special furniture commissions for actress Catherine Deneuve and Pauline Savier, the sister of jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane. One of his best-known commissions include Jean Cocteau’s Parisian pied-à-terre in the Palais Royal, which he furnished with trompe l’oeil wallpapers depicting Cocteau’s famous friends such as Colette, Christian "Bebè" Bérard and Jean Desbordes.