安迪·沃荷

São Schlumberger (acquired directly from the artist in 1974)
Thence by descent to the present owner

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 70s, November 1979 - January 1980, p. 118, illustrated in color (catalogue raisonné no. 2756) and catalogue raisonné no. 2753, not illustrated
Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Un Musée Ephémère: Collections privées française 1945-1985, July - October 1986, cat. no. 81, p. 153, illustrated in color (all four panels)

Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 70s, 1979, p. 119, illustrated in color (catalogue raisonné no. 2755)
Artstudio, no. 8, 1988, p. 121, illustrated in color (all four panels)
Neil Printz and Sally King Nero, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, Volume 3, 1970-1974, New York, 2010, pp. 473-475, cat. nos. 2753-2756, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition. The four lateral tacking margin edges are slightly dirty overall from airborne dust and dirt, primarily on the top edges. Notes below refer to the canvases in the order of the catalogue illustration (top row left to right: i. and ii.; bottom row left to right: iii. And iv.) i. There is a faint drip in the lower right quadrant, 11-16" from the bottom edge and 6" from the right. ii. There are a very small number of inherent lacunae in the paint, primarily in the lower right corner, top center and upper right corner, associated with the artist's process. iii. There is scattered faint soiling to a small area on São's proper right cheek. There are slight draws to the corners of the canvas. iv. There are slight draws to the corners of the canvas, and a very small faintly brown liquid accretion on São's proper left cheek. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. Each canvas is unframed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Amongst the coterie of artists that São Schlumberger championed, there was perhaps none more important or favored than Andy Warhol. The glamorous Schlumberger, who had established a name for herself as a serious and forward-looking collector and patron of the arts, was exactly the kind of magnetic personality that enthralled Warhol. By the 1970s, the artist’s upward social mobility and ascending celebrity status meant that he no longer admired his subjects from a distance, but instead frequently associated himself with the rich and famous. Significantly, it was Warhol who first sought out São Schlumberger, and not vice versa. In meeting São, dazzlingly bejeweled and bedecked in “blue Givenchy,” Warhol was undeniably smitten with her audacity and the dream-like fantasy in which she lived; her neighbor on Rue Férou was Man Ray—whose portrait Warhol would also paint in 1974—and her exquisite apartment on Avenue Floquet in the Seventh Arrondissement was where she hosted artists, dignitaries, and Parisian society.

Warhol had probably met São Schlumberger through John and Dominique de Menil, but it was in the social milieu of Paris that Warhol pursued her for a portrait commission, having been especially eager to paint her likeness; as Bob Colacello astutely observed, she was something of a maverick from the Saint Laurent-Rothschild axis: “São Schlumberger was one of a rare breed: a rich woman with a mind of her own. Half Portuguese, half German, she refused to follow the Paris pack, no matter how much it made the other ladies tittle-tattle. She loved the couture and her jewels as much as they loved theirs, but she also loved art and the artists.” (Bob Colacello cited in Neil Printz and Sally King Nero, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Paintings and Sculptures, Volume 3, 1970-1974, New York, 2010, p. 413) When they approached her in July 1973, Schlumberger initially declined to have her portrait done, claiming that when Salvador Dalí painted her, he made her look too old. According to Colacello, by the end of February 1974, she changed her mind.

One of the very first commissioned portraits of the 1970s, along with Hélène Rochas and Silvia de Waldner, São was the final sitter in a triumvirate of Parisian high-society beauties who had their portraits painted by Warhol in 1974. Warhol photographed her at the Carlyle Hotel in New York using his distinctive Polaroid camera, eventually selecting two of the images from which he painted the present four portraits—two based on each pose. Warhol unveiled the completed set of four canvases with Fred Hughes and Bob Colacello in person at Pierre and São’s apartment shortly after, on May 14, the date inscribed on one of the canvases, as recounted by Colacello. The ornamental, florid backdrop for the last of these four portraits is shared with two other pictures that the artist also painted in 1974: Barbara Streisand and Halston. The bold swaths of irregular color in undulating motion behind São’s head may perhaps be an intentional reference by Warhol to paintings by Matisse in her own collection.

Singlehandedly responsible for resurrecting the endangered tradition of grandiose society portraiture, Andy Warhol became the court-painter for the modern era, electrifying the upper echelons of society with brilliant reflections of their charismatic personages. Warhol’s pictures of celebrity and international aristocracy from the 1970s capture the high wattage of both their stature and glittering personalities; colors are jolted to supreme brightness and opulent brushstrokes of paint cover the canvas, aesthetically reveling in the wealth and high fashion of the elite that Warhol aimed to depict. In these pictures of São, the paint crackles and we can almost hear the flashing of the bulb, feel the heat of the spotlight upon her enchanting and timelessly elegant face. Surrounded by wriggling brushstrokes and fixed in her exquisite grace, the always fashionable São is immortalized in Warhol’s inimitable image. The portraits of 1974 revive the scribbled line that had not appeared in the artist's work since 1962. The ribbons of color that coil around São’s head were painted by Warhol using the tips of his fingers, a technique of applying paint that is exclusive to the portraits from this year. Reviving the presence of his own hand in his picture—a visible mark-making that had been eluded for the past twelve years—these portraits exhumed Warhol’s painterly bravado, and anticipated the gestural, brush-heavy paintings that would follow for the next two decades.

Collectively known as the Society Portraits, the timing of these works coincided directly with Warhol’s own soaring stardom; as propounded by Robert Rosenblum in 1979, “Warhol’s upward mobility was supersonic. Instead of getting the super stars’ photo from movie magazines or the Sunday color supplement, he himself quickly invaded their society on equal terms, and could be begged by prospective sitters to turn his own Polaroid camera on their fabled faces in both public and private moods. He had become a celebrity among celebrities, and an ideal court painter to the 1970s international aristocracy that mixed, in wildly varying proportions, wealth, high fashion, and brains.” (Robert Rosenblum, ‘Andy Warhol Court Painter to the 70s,’ Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Andy Warhol Portraits of the 70s, 1979, p. 15) In the portraits of 1974, Andy Warhol and São Schlumberger laid the foundations for a collaborative and enduring friendship grounded in reciprocal like-mindedness and respect. Warhol’s diaries chart their relationship over the course of the following decade and across the globe—Paris, New York, Naples, and Monte Carlo were all destinations where Warhol would ‘bump into São’ and share a meal, or party at Studio 54. Alongside the commissioned portraits of herself, São came to acquire an outstanding cross-section of Warhol’s output. Indeed, their initial meeting marked a seismic change for São and the future of her collection.