Death of a Collection

In one of the biggest art deals of its kind in the past quarter-century, the Edward G. and Gladys Lloyd Robinson Collection, one of the finest private ingatherings in America, was sold this week for $3,250,000. Made up mostly of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, the collection was doomed when the Robinsons were divorced last August and the California courts directed that their communal property be equally divided. But Movie Tough-Guy Robinson, unable to part with all his pictures ("I would like to keep them all"), held on to 14 of them. The balance of the collection--58 paintings and one bronze--went to Manhattan's M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. A mystery remained. Nobody would say whether Knoedler's had bought for itself or for an undisclosed syndicate.

The collection was the personal triumph as well as the joy of Actor Robinson, who as a boy had been an ardent collector of cigar bands, had moved on to oils 25 years ago (after Little Caesar), when his Hollywood salary jumped from $1,000 to $7,000 a week. Among his prize canvases were Corot's L'ltalienne, Ceezanne's The Black Clock, and masterpieces by Van Gogh, Degas, Matisse, Renoir, Gauguin, and almost every other major French painter of the past half-century. When the collection became notable, Robinson opened his Hollywood home to the public. In recent years it was also exhibited around the country at some of the nation's best museums.

Gladys Lloyd Robinson did not mind seeing the great collection go. Temperamentally, she was "tired of being a curator of an art museum," and she needed the money. But Cigar-Chomper Robinson, who had lovingly brought the paintings together one by one, sounded sad and nostalgic. "My favorites?" he said. "They are all my favorites."

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