Like many superrich and morally dubious magnates, Zsa-Zsa Korda, Benicio del Toro’s arms dealing tycoon at the center of Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, seems to collect art mostly just to show it off (and for the investment potential). “Never buy good pictures,” he says. “Buy masterpieces.” Which, in his case, includes a 17th-century Floris van Schooten still-life, a 1942 painting by Magritte (The Equator), and Renoir’s 1889 portrait of his young nephew, among other things. And they are all real, thanks to Jasper Sharp, the production’s art curator and a longtime Anderson collaborator, who secured the works (they are interspersed with a few replicas, namely a painstakingly copied Rubens).
The Renoir, in particular, left a strong impression on cast and crew alike. “It was fascinating to see how the presence of this object changed the energy on the set,” Sharp told Artnet. “It had a transformative effect on you.” All the more so given the work’s provenance: Greta Garbo owned this very painting, named Enfant assis en robe bleue, for nearly 50 years.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Enfant assis en robe bleue (Portrait d’Edmond Renoir fils), 1889.
The legendary actress bought the painting in 1942, just a year after she quit acting and moved into the New York apartment where she would live out the rest of her life as the world’s most sought-after recluse. Where did she hang it? Take a tour of the place, courtesy of last month’s May issue, and posit a guess (we have our theories, too).
When Garbo died in 1990, the Renoir—along with 250 items from her collection, which had grown to include Van Goghs and Delaunays and Bonnards—was put up for auction at Sotheby’s, where it sold for $7 million. Fast forward to 2007, when the painting resurfaced again at Sotheby’s and fetched $10.9 million from a private collector and, in true Garbo-esque fashion, retired from public view. Well, until now.
Leena Kim is Town & Country’s Editor, covering the travel, jewelry, style, arts and culture, education, and weddings beats. She has no priors—she has been at the magazine for 11 years, having started her career at T&C as the assistant to the editor in chief.