New Yorkers got a first peek at a treasure trove of art stashed away for decades by the late copper heiress Huguette Clark and her family.
Stunning oil paintings, rare books and furniture — some out of circulation for 170 years — hit the auction block at Christie’s in Midtown on Wednesday, with one item fetching more than $4 million.
“The art is a moment in time frozen in history. It’s a true rarity — and a true New York story,” said Andrew McVinish of Christie’s, who dusted off pieces found in the family’s Fifth Avenue mansion for the auction.
Some of it had sat unseen since the Harding administration in the Roaring Twenties, he said.
“They’re magnificent discoveries . . . In some cases, we were the first people to see these things in person since the 1920s,” said McVinish, head of private and iconic collections for the auction house.
Top-selling art included John Singer Sargent’s painting “Girl Fishing at San Vigilio,” which raked in $4.3 million and William Merritt Chase’s “View of Prospect Park,” which fetched $461,000.
A first-edition copy of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” featuring a rare promotional insert written by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, sold for $305,000, setting a world record for a book published by Whitman.
Charles Baudelaire’s book of French poetry, “Les Fleurs du Mal,” sold for $293,000.
Dozens of personal items owned by the Clark family — one of the country’s wealthiest in the early 1900s — were also unveiled.
A leather satchel carried by Clark’s father, William A. Clark, a politician and entrepreneur, sold for $16,250.
The auction also featured a self portrait painted by the reclusive heiress herself — who abandoned her sprawling Fifth Avenue home to live in a hospital wing, even though she was healthy. She died at Beth Israel Hospital in 2011 at the age of 104.
Some art lovers couldn’t resist the family’s fascinating backstory.
“She could have done anything. She could have bought anything. But she chose very specific [art] and she had beautiful taste,” said Andrew Lucre.
“Everything she bought, she didn’t buy because it was expensive. She bought it because it was elegant and exquisite,” he said.
Aspen real-estate company owner Nancy DiBiaggio, 66, called her art emotionally rich.
“It was wonderful seeing them in person,” she said.