Lot Essay
Baroness Korff's aunt was the American sculptor Mary Callery (1903-1977) who lived and worked in France for ten years from 1930. During this feverish decade in Paris, Mary Callery became close friends with - and in some instances lover to - Henri Matisse, Fernand L/geger, Alexander Calder, Aristide Maillol and indeed Pablo Picasso. Only as the Germans advanced on Paris in 1940, did she leave her studio overlooking the Seine to return to her native New York, taking with her an important collection of works by her French Modernist friends. As one of the early advocates of Modernism in New York, a highly talented sculptor herself, and a socialite (she was known as a great beauty and came from an old, established family), she became a key figure in the cultural life of post-war New York. She died in her beloved Paris in 1977.