(2 of 2)
On the death of his father in 1947, Robert Lehman took over the collection, may have increased his net worth more through his art collection than in his stock investments. A two-goal-handicap polo teammate to the late Tommy Hitchcock (ten-goal), a horse-race fancier and keen fisherman, Lehman still found time to fill in the gaps in the collection. As early as 1927 he began buying modern works—Renoir, Seurat, Degas, Cezanne, early Picasso ("But not cubists, thank God"). Lehman, now 64, senior partner of Lehman Bros., vice president of the Metropolitan Museum and Chairman of the Associates in Fine Arts of Yale, uses his moderns to furnish his downtown office and 18-room Park Avenue apartment, keeps most of the collection's old masters in the family's East 54th Street, Manhattan mansion off Fifth Avenue.
Knighthood at the Louvre. The idea of a Louvre show (the equivalent of knighthood for collectors) grew out of a loan exhibit of some 90 Lehman-collection paintings and drawings to the Metropolitan Museum (TIME, Jan. 25, 1954). Visiting Director of French Museums Georges Salles, overwhelmed by what he saw, promptly offered a solo show at the Louvre's Orangerie. Francophile Lehman let the Louvre take its pick, took the S.S. Liberté to France, with his pretty young third wife Lee, to oversee the installation in the Orangerie, ordered two more shipments of period furniture shipped air-freight at the last moment to give the collection its final touch.
As nervous as a producer on opening night, Collector Lehman could not resist flicking a last speck of dust off the canvases with his handkerchief. He need not have worried. The opening was followed by crowds of Parisians standing in line to be dazzled by an American banker's good taste. Said one old Paris hand: "This turnout of tout Paris, and the thundering salute from the press will do more good for relations between France and America than anything in years."