Christie’s Will Offer $8 M. in Works from Mickey Cartin’s Collection, from Netherlandish Painting to Contemporary Art to Rare Books

Widely respected Connecticut collector Mickey Cartin will offer selections from his collection, begun in 1988, at Christie’s. Upward of 80 objects, estimated to fetch as much as $8 million, will be spread over more than 10 auctions in London, Paris, and New York, from this November until July 2027.

In 1971, Cartin began working at Connecticut’s Capitol Light and Supply Company, which had been started by his grandfather in 1918. He ultimately became the company’s president and grew it from a staff of a dozen to a national enterprise employing hundreds. His collection hung in his homes in the Constitution State; Delray Beach, Florida; and a 5,800-square-foot Greenwich Village apartment that is currently on the market for $10 million. Now 78, Cartin ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list from 2007 to 2013.

Two of the top-estimated works sketch out a picture of the diversity of his holdings. One is Roman Opałka’s over-six-foot-high painting OPAŁKA 1965/1 – Détail 3820343 -3843981 (executed according to an artistic program conceived in 1965), tagged at $400,000–$600,000, which is part of a what the artist called a single work in which he aimed to paint every number from one to infinity.

Also estimated in the mid-six figures is a 15th-century Netherlandish panel painting, Resurrection of Christ, by the Master of the Virgo Inter Virgines, that was restituted to the heirs of the Dutch dealer Jacques Goudstikker after it was looted by the Nazis. It is the rare European work of its time to include a Black figure among the soldiers at Christ’s tomb, and it previously hung in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Artnet’s auction price database includes just nine works by the Master, his circle, or “in the manner of” the artist; his top sale to date was $35,874, paid for a crucifixion scene at Kunsthaus Lempertz in 1998.

Cartin also collects material as wide-ranging as outsider art and rare books stretching from the 13th century to contemporary artists’ books. “One of the things that gets said about Mickey is he was one of the earliest collectors who collected across categories,” Steven Holmes, Cartin’s curator of two decades, said in a phone interview. “But he never even really understood categories, and still doesn’t. He’s just compelled by the object on its own.”

Other top-estimated lots include Walton Ford’s watercolor Avatars – The Birds of India (1996), estimated at $200,000–$300,000; a 1950 Giorgio de Chirico self-portrait, at $180,000–$250,000; a 1517 book, the Theuerdank, printed for Emperor Maximilian I and recounting his youthful exploits in verse, at £100,000—£150,000 (about $133,000–$200,000); and German physician Georg Bartisch’s 1583 book Ophthalmodouleia: Das ist Augendienst, the first Renaissance manuscript on ophthalmic disorders and eye surgery, estimated at £70,000–£100,000 ($93,000–$133,000).

Selections from Cartin’s collection have come to market before, including in a 2021 exhibition at David Zwirner in New York that included artists as diverse as Josef Albers, Joseph Cornell, Albrecht Dürer, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Giorgio Morandi, Rembrandt van Rijn, Myron Stout, Adolf Wölfli, and Joseph Yoakum.

Cartin has been known to hang works in productive conversations that, naturally, dispense with categories. “I remember when we installed the collection in such a way that you could see an Agnes Martin, a Jean-Michel Basquiat, a Hans Memling Madonna from the 16th century, and then the Master of the Virgo Inter Virgines, an astounding painting from the Netherlands from the late 1400s,” said Holmes. “These each have their own story and their own holding power, but all together, it was such a an experience of them all going together in a way that made sense without there necessarily being any logic to it. There is something devotional about an Agnes Martin, which is what the Madonna is. There were notions of devotion, or miracle, or meanings above meaning.”

He added, “These can be really quite thrilling, not just visually or in terms of who the artists are, their art historical importance, but the energy that comes out of those conversations and proximities.”

“There are two tangible ideas in his collecting philosophy,” Michael Baptist, Christie’s vice president, specialist, and co-head of postwar and contemporary art day sale, said in a phone interview. “One, he is curious about ideas and things that are exquisite examples of artists even if he doesn’t know about them. If he sees an idea in an artwork, that turns him on as a collector.”

He continued, “But additionally, he acquires works because each individual object captures his imagination. It sounds so simple, but if you can really adhere to that as a collector, you’re going to have an outstanding collection, and it’s not going to follow the guidelines collectors often follow. Another thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is that once he’s identified an idea or a density of information, he collects that in depth.”