A Beautician's Booty

The late Polish-born cosmetics czarina, Helena Rubinstein, was a passionate pack rat. As some women accumulate lipsticks, she collected silverware, Oriental rugs, miniature period furniture, African art and dolls. She also owned works by the greatest French painters of her day. When she died last year at the age of 94, she left four homes--in Manhattan, Greenwich, Conn., London and Paris--each packed with masterpieces and exquisite junk.

Just to move her collection through the auction halls last week required eight separate sales in seven days. Said an appraiser for New York's Parke-Bernet Galleries, after picking through her 26-room Manhattan triplex penthouse at 625 Park Avenue: "She even had closets leading to closets." But many of her choicest treasures were kept in her Ile St. Louis flat in Paris (see color pages). On the sales' opening day, a La Fresnaye cubist painting of garden tools brought $100,000. Chagall's Lovers and the Moon fetched $24,000, and the Bonnard landscape (see overleaf) sold for $60,000.*

Chained to the Cliff. One of eight daughters of a Cracow merchant, Helena Rubinstein launched a thousand ships for herself by making women care to be beautiful, stashed her jewels in drawers marked D for diamonds and R for rubies. She slept in an illuminated Lucite bed that she had had designed for $675 (which sold for $200). Her wealth was reckoned at more than $100 million, but she was frugal enough to eat lunch from a paper bag and strong enough, at 93, to stand off three thugs who tried to burgle her New York apartment.

She found Matisse "cold, aloof and difficult to deal with," but bought more than 35 of his works. Chagall delighted her; she found him "an electric eel of a man with bright eyes and an unruly mop of hair." Helena purchased six gouaches by him. In 1942 she outfitted the cardroom of her New York apartment with three Dali murals depicting Morning, Noon and Night. Flushed with success, Dali next wanted to do a fountain spouting from a piano suspended from the ceiling. "That," he said, "is the essence of surrealism." For once Madame said no.

Under the Heel. As befits a beautician, Helena found one subject irresistible--herself. Over the years she was painted 30 times. The last portrait, by the British artist Graham Sutherland, shocked her most. It made her look, she said, like "an eagle-eyed matriarch." The portrait she most coveted escaped her. It was by Picasso. When he asked her age, she replied to his delight: "Older than you are!" But nothing pleased him. "You might not live long enough to finish it," warned Mme. Rubinstein, then 92. Picasso sketched away, tossed one on the floor. She bent to pick it up, and he put his foot on it. She pleaded; he would not budge. In that contest of wills, Picasso was the winner.

* The jewelry collection was auctioned separately last year for $371,715.

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