Mr. Crowinshield Unloads

"It would make a frightful mess if I died and left all this stuff for other people to take care of."

Last week 71-year-old Frank Crowninshield, the dapper, white-haired fine arts editor of Vogue, who once wrote an article entitled "Ten Thousand Nights in a Dinner Coat," sold at auction his influential collection of modern, mostly French art. The 1019 items offered at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries put a total of $181,747 into "Crownie's" elegantly tailored pocket and the event itself had the quality of social luster, with a note of high gaga, which he dearly loves.

Gypsy Rose Lee walked off with a small Degas under her arm, too excited to wait for the rest of the auction. At the book sale particularly, connoisseurs held their seats as the prices skyrocketed. The Manet ellustrees published in 1929, containing Manet watercolor reproductions in color, went for $360--though its Paris price ten years ago was around $30. The collection was a market sensation from Derain to Dufy, from Rouault to Renoir. It was strongest in works by Crowninshield's old friends, French Painter Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac and French Sculptor Charles Despiau. Highest price of the auction was $7,250 for de Segonzac's vigorously painted French riverside with a church in the background, L'Eglise et La Marne, Champigny. Another notable price was $2,100 for Jules Pascin's Girl in Green and Rose (see cut), a smoldering, libidinous canvas of a young woman en deshabille, described in the Crowninshield catalog by Critic Lionello Venturi as a matter of "fascinating nacreous nuances." A Rouault-illustrated book brought $1,725.

Francis Welch Crowninshield is a Boston Brahmin who was born in Paris of German forebears (von Kronenscheldt) and who lives in Manhattan. Says he, "I am a poor but good Crowninshield." His father was a mural painter of independent means. As editor of the late, lamented Vanity Fair Crownie made it a lively canape-service of contemporary taste, with succulent tidbits of Noel Coward, Colette, Dorothy Parker, Ring Lardner, Harold Nicolson, Edmund Wilson, et al.

Crowninshield's persistent plumping for modern art in Vanity Fair at first alarmed Publisher Conde Nast and a good section of his office force. Nast later wrote, in an office memorandum: ". . . In time, however . . . we derived a very considerable benefit from having published such. In fact, a portfolio of our prints . . . scored so great a success that we netted a handsome profit. . . ."

Besides his favorite artists Crowninshield is ready to pay fond tribute to the late great Architect Stanford White, to the old Waldorf, to the full-rigged hostess of the 1900s, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. He is an accomplished toastmaster, cotillon leader, bon vivant who neither drinks nor smokes, first-nighter, balletomane, golfer, bridge player, cat enthusiast, and clubman (Union, Knickerbocker). He once hired Dorothy Parker to write for him on the strength of one line she produced in an advertising agency ("Brevity is the soul of lingerie").

Crownie's friend, Columnist Westbrook Pegler, offered to contribute to the auction the imaginary Pegler Collection of Indecent Postcards. It was Pegler who once parodied Crownie's conversational style as follows:

" 'Have you seen the new sculpture of this man Mike Hogan, the Kansas City ashman? Really lovely, really charming in its way. A new thing. He works in chewing gum, matchsticks and hair combings.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.