Pictures, Passions and Eye by Michel Strauss

Author:Michel Strauss [Michel Strauss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905559213
Publisher: Halban
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Andrew Strauss and Paris

Another valuable colleague who started out as a volunteer and has become such an asset in the international Impressionist and Modern Art departments, is my son Andrew. Born on 6 March 1962, appropriately on Michelangelo’s birthday and soon after I joined Sotheby’s, Andrew’s first experience of a ‘business trip’, albeit when he was only five weeks old, was in April 1962 when I was sent to New York to cover for Peregrine Pollen, then head of Sotheby’s New York office, when he had to return to England for six weeks. Margery and Andrew came with me, staying at the Carlyle Hotel with my grandmother Lala. To have her first great grandchild visiting her for six weeks gave her tremendous pleasure.

We were very conscious of wanting our children to get to know and love art but at the same time would never oblige them to go to museums or exhibitions, realising that making any child do something against its will, could only spoil it for them in the future. I had heard too many stories of that happening in other families.

In 1963 we had had a house built on the Cap Bénat, a stunning location with a great view of the Mediterranean visible though the pine trees surrounding the house. When we travelled around France or other European countries, usually on the way back to London after the summer holidays at our Cap Bénat house, we sometimes could tempt Andrew and his younger sister, Julia, into a cathedral or a museum, all in the guise of cultural tourism, telling them it would be fun to light a candle or look at classical statues of naked marble figures, which usually got them rudely pointing and giggling. Occasionally, during the Easter holidays, we would take them to fascinating places such as Tunisia, Morocco, Crete and Istanbul, which I am certain must have had a powerful influence on Andrew’s growing interest in exotic travel and Julia’s future love for the Classics plus the history and languages of Greece and Rome. Eventually they developed a real curiosity about the arts, Andrew ending up at Sotheby’s, while Julia went up to read Classics at Oxford and eventually wrote a doctoral thesis on Ancient Roman shipwrecks and trade, partly instigated by her life-long passion for scuba diving on wrecks. Her latest achievement, which has delighted us all, has been to give birth to a daughter, Elisabeth Olivia, on 13 January 2009.

Both my children have inherited my love for sculpture and objects. Many years ago on a visit to the Louvre’s French sculpture gallery, I showed Julia the bust of Louis XIV as a child by Jacques Sarrazin, that my mother had donated in 1939 in memory of my father. This was a fine gesture, but knowing my taste for sculpture, it is a pity I wasn’t old enough to first enjoy it at home before it went to the Louvre! In any case it is quite likely that it would have been looted by the Germans during the war whilst, at least at the Louvre, it was placed in safe keeping.

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