Million-Dollar Master

Until she died last February at 84, sprightly Mrs. Anna Erickson occupied a special place in the art world. Her late husband was an advertising tycoon (McCann-Erickson, Inc.) who, with a connoisseur's taste, had begun a small collection of paintings that she kept adding to. In the end, the collection had only 24 works, but it was one that made the mouths of museum directors water.

Over the years a steady stream of experts paraded by the collection in admiration and envy. Sir Kenneth Clark was charmed, and so was Critic Alfred Frankfurter, editor of Art News. "She would ask me hundreds of questions," says Frankfurter, "about why certain artists were important in their time. She wondered why Perugino was not considered to be as good as Raphael." Though she was eager for advice, she had wisdom of her own. Among her purchases was Perugino's St. Augustine with Members of the Fraternity of Perugia. "It was a sophisticated choice," says Frankfurter. "It is one of the greatest pre-Raphael paintings."

Valued conservatively at $3,000,000, the collection ranged from a delicate Madonna and Child by the Venetian master Carlo Crivelli to works, mostly portraits, by Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Frans Hals, Jean Honore Fragonard, George Romney and Thomas Gainsborough. In money terms, the prize of the lot was one of the three Rembrandts: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Commissioned in 1653 by a Sicilian nobleman named Don Antonio Ruffo, it was one of the finest masterpieces in any private collection.

In the hope that Mrs. Erickson might leave the treasure to them, says Director Ric Brown of Los Angeles' County Museum, "museum directors all over the world have been doing the fanciest snake dances about this picture." But, following the pattern of her husband's will, Mrs. Erickson divided her estate into 90 parts, and that meant that almost all the paintings had to be sold. For four months, Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries and London's Sotheby's and Christie's have been bidding for the job. Last week it went to Parke-Bernet, whose auction next November should make art history. In 1928 Erickson paid Duveen Bros. $750,000 for the Rembrandt Aristotle. After the crash, he sold it back for $500,000, but in 1936 bought it again for $590,000. With the art market of today, Aristotle seems a cinch to break the $1,000,000 mark, which would be the highest price ever paid for a painting at an auction.

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