A Few Collectors

Pierre Le-Tan was an internationally renowned French illustrator who designed whimsical and stylish covers for The New Yorker and images for other magazines including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, as well as book covers for works by his friend Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. Le-Tan died in 2019 at age sixty-nine. A year and a half later, over four hundred objects that filled his Paris apartment, a high-ceilinged cabinet of curiosities on the Place du Palais-Bourbon, were auctioned off to passionate admirers of his taste.

"Funny and whimsical. There are wonderful asides ... It is also poignant." —The New York TimesAn utterly charming book by beloved Parisian artist Pierre Le-Tan, filled with dazzling illustrations and intriguing tales about often eccentric art collectors. Le-Tan, known for designing New Yorker magazine covers and collaborations with fashion houses, summons up memories of inveterate collectors in this lavishly illustrated volume. He evokes fascinating, sometimes troubled figures through insightful and curious portraits. With seventy of his distinctive pen and ink drawings—in vibrant color with meticulous cross-hatching—A Few Collectors opens a window onto the vast or minuscule world created by collectors out of a mix of extravagance and obstinacy. It recounts encounters in Paris, the Côte d’Azur, North Africa, London and New York, where Le-Tan’s subjects have amassed a range of treasures. Some involve famed figures like former Louvre Museum director Pierre Rosenberg. Others are insolvent aristocrats, princes of film and fashion, expatriate dandies, and flat-out obsessive eccentrics. Le-Tan devotes perhaps his finest chapter to himself.