Stanley J. Seeger

Stanley Joseph Seeger, Jr. (28 May 1930-2011) was an American born art collector who lived in Britain for the last three decades of his life.

Life

Born into a wealthy family in Milwaukee, Seeger's father was a doctor and book collector, and his mother collected antiques. Seeger's maternal grandfather was from Scotland, and created the family's fortune from interests in wood and oil.^[1]

Seeger studied architecture at Princeton University, later changing his discipline to music. In Italy Seeger studied under composer Luigi Dallapiccola.^[1] Seeger later established the Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton.^[2] Moving from America to Europe, Seeger initially lived in Greece in the 1960s, and became a keen sailor. Seeger later moved to the Canary Islands, before permanently settling in England. Seeger was introduced to Christopher Cone, who was 24 years his junior, in 1979. They remained partners for over 30 years until Seeger's death.^[1]

Seeger was also an amateur composer, but none of his music was ever performed.^[1] His obituary in The Telegraph described his music as "inhabiting an arcane territory where music met mathematics". Seeger was survived by Cone, they had lived in North Yorkshire for the last years of Seeger's life.^[1]

Sutton Place

Seeger bought the Grade I listed Tudor manor house Sutton Place, the former home of the American oil magnate Paul Getty, near Guildford in Surrey, for £8 million in 1980 (£NaN as of 2016).^[3] At the time this was the highest price ever paid for a British property.^[1][2] The Sutton Place Heritage Trust was established by Seeger and Cone to open the house for concerts and exhibitions. Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe was commissioned to create a major new garden, which included a serpentine lake and a number of themed spaces: at the time, it was the largest post-War landscaping commission for a private client.^[4] Seeger and Cone had underestimated the media attention that their purchase of Sutton Pace would garner, and sold the property six years later.^[2] Cone later said that “I don't think Stanley ever anticipated that it would shine such a strong spotlight on himself. It didn't suit him, and it didn't suit me. The meter was running from the day that we moved in. We felt very lonely there, very exposed: two men living together in this great big country house. It was a statement too far.”^[2]

Collecting

In 1993 Seeger sold his entire collection of 88 artworks by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso at Sotheby's in New York, raising over $32m.^[2] Cone would later describe the Picasso sale as "hairy-scary".^[2] Seeger had told him that he no longer wanted the collection, feeling that once they had acquired a painting from Picasso's Rose Period it would be complete.^[2] Attending a viewing of his Picasso collection Seeger, known for his privacy, overheard two people saying that they believed that Seeger didn't exist, which amused him.^[2] Seeger once said that his reason for purchasing a particular Picasso painting was that “It was so bad it needed to be taken out of circulation.”^[1]

Seeger bought Francis Bacon's Triptych – Studies of the Human Body (1979), one of 28 large triptychs by the artist, and controversially hung it in the Tudor Great Hall at Sutton Place. Bacon himself visited Sutton Place to see his the painting, and Cone said that Bacon appreciated its location there.^[2] Seeger sold the painting in 2001 for $8.6 million, then the highest price for a painting by Bacon.^[2]

The final sale of Seeger's collection took place at Sotheby's in March 2014, entitled "One Thousand Ways of Seeing".^[2] Curiosities in the sale included Orson Welles personal shooting script for his 1941 film Citizen Kane, an armchair belonging to Winston Churchill, Rudolf Nureyev's coat-rack and copper bath, and a teapot belonging to Lord Nelson.^[2]

The architect and designer Sir Hugh Casson said of Seeger that he regarded "the chic as a badge of insecurity and the conventional as a signal of surrender".^[2]

References