The arty contents of American financier Roberto Agostinelli’s royally-appointed London abode are officially heading to auction at Sotheby’s in Paris. For 40 years, the renowned French interior designer Jacques Grange has steered Agostinelli’s diverse collection, which includes design by Francoise-Xavier Lalanne, paintings by the likes of Italian Renaissance master Tintoretto, and photography by big names like the late Peter Beard—a notorious playboy who dated Jackie Onassis’s sister, discovered Iman, and partied with Mick Jagger.
Three days later, three more of Beard’s mixed media photographs will go on sale with Phillips in New York. Although Beard’s legendary work hasn’t yet entered the world’s leading museums, his shots of African animals and fabled supermodels alike have already taken a spot in art history.
Beard, who Fran Leibowitz once called “the most handsome straight man I ever met,” was New York money incarnate. His great grandfather James J. Hill founded the Great Northern Railway, and his step-grandfather Pierre Lorillard IV was a tobacco magnate. His father worked on Wall Street, his mother was a tightly wound housewife. Beard, meanwhile, was a baby black sheep who started keeping diaries early on, supplementing them with photos after his grandma got him a Voigtländer camera. He visited Africa for the first time with Charles Darwin’s great grandson just before starting his pre-med degree at Yale, and fell in love with the country. Against his parents’ wishes, he switched to studying art history with greats like Josef Albers and Alex Katz.
Beard’s parents set him up with an advertising agency job upon his graduation in 1961, but he never showed. Instead, Beard traveled—to Copenhagen (where he charmed Out of Africa author Karen Blixen) then to Kenya (where Blixen had a coffee farm outside of Nairobi). He befriended Salvador Dalí, then Andy Warhol, and photographed German supermodel Veruschka von Lehndorff for Diana Vreeland, the best editorVogue ever had. Soon enough, Beard got a special grant from the Kenyan president to acquire land abutting Blixen’s farm, which he turned into an art retreat called Hog Ranch. Around that time, he documented a mass death of 35,000 elephants for his star-making 1965 book, The End of the Game. Beard staunchly advocated against overdevelopment, especially in post-colonial Africa. Elephants became his preferred symbol. When one almost killed Beard in 1996, he brushed it off as revenge for nature’s demise.
Alas, no magnificent elephants appear in any of the five Beard works hitting the block next week. But there’s still plenty of excitement. All but one of those five works hail from very early on in Beard’s career. Agostinelli is putting up a collage of three photos featuring flocks of curious deer and antelope that Beard captured on his maiden voyage to “Colonial East Africa,” as the work is called, in 1960. It’s estimated to fetch $8,217 to $11,738. Agostinelli is also consigning a 1964 shot of Veruschka roping rhinos, looking saucy in snakeskin (est. $17,608 to $29,346). While silver gelatin prints such as these are typically all but identical from one to the next, the nonconformist Beard had a habit of customizing his editions. These particular iterations feature ink inscriptions, drawings, paint, and even crystals that render the prints one-of-a-kind creations.
“Beard reinvented photography as an art form in the most complex, philosophical manner—whether consciously or not, it doesn’t matter,” art historian Drew Hammond has stated. “What is important is that he used the photograph as an image field for another work of art.”
At Phillips, anonymous collector(s) are offering even more complex specimens featuring ink, feathers, and blood—perhaps Beard’s most controversial motif. “Wounded Lion @ Lariak Estate / Rumuruti Kenya” (1960) is slated to sell for $100,000 to $150,000. A 1963 work immortalizing Dalí and model Nena von Schlébrügge could fetch $20,000 to $30,000. And, proceeds from “Serengeti Lion” (1976) (est. $50,000 – $70,000) will benefit Cambodian nonprofit Aziza’s Place.
Those three works evoke Beard’s densely collaged diaries, which another close pal, Irish-British painter Francis Bacon, considered them some “of the most important works of their era.” Dozens such diaries exist, combining photos, receipts, magazine clippings, notes, and porn. Swiss collector Bernard Sabrier tried to buy one for $1 million in 2007. Beard’s studio, founded by his third, final, and fiery wife Nejma, rebuffed him. By comparison, Beard’s auction record, set in 2017 at Christie’s with “Orphaned Cheetah Cubs, Mweiga, near Nyeri, Kenya” (1968), is just $672,500.
Despite his ritzy origins, Beard lived most of his adult life as a self-labeled “bum” who avoided responsibility, chased kicks, and quickly drained his meager trust fund. Thus, Beard was known to flood his own market, offering works by way of payment—until he rambled off into Montauk’s wilds to die in 2020. It remains to be seen whether stymied supply will drive up prices—though Beard’s works do regularly outdo estimates. His absence from institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art prove Beard’s legacy still has room to grow as art history negotiates one of its many morally gray players—a reckless, oftentimes insensitive man who still remained wholly bohemian and beloved by many.
