Sotheby's Modern Day Auction is privileged to present an exceptional single-owner corpus of Sanyu's drawings and watercolours, in the collection of Mr Raymond Toupenet. Active as a dealer in mid‑20th‑century Paris, Mr Toupenet devoted his career to the study and promotion of Art Nouveau—particularly the École de Nancy—and the decorative arts. Renowned for his refined taste, he combined connoisseurship with an ardent personal collecting practice, showing a sustained commitment to Art Nouveau and Symbolist idioms.
Mr Toupenet’s engagement with Sanyu began in the early 1980s when he encountered the artist’s drawings through Mr Jean‑Claude Riedel, a principal dealer for Sanyu’s paintings. Mr. Riedel showed him several of Sanyu's drawings, and the avant-garde synthesis of these works left a lasting impression on Mr Toupenet. This encounter catalysed subsequent acquisitions of Sanyu's works.
Some years later, a chance meeting with dealer Frank Kramer at the Saint‑Ouen flea market yielded a pivotal discovery: he discovered a beautiful group of works by Sanyu. Mr Toupenet then decided to acquire the entire group immediately.
Financial exigencies later prompted MrToupenet to sell most of his collection to Riedel and his patrons, retaining only his most treasured works on paper, which he treasured across decades. The present selection—intimate, impeccably preserved—affords rare insight into a collector's enduring dialogue with one of the 20th century's most singular modernists.
