Fancy Marilyn Monroe’s candlesticks? The tale of Manny Davidson’s collection — and a Shakespearean family feud

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Candlesticks once owned by Marilyn Monroe, a rediscovered Rubens and silver spoons used by the American financier John Pierpont Morgan. These are among the 500 items owned by Manny Davidson. The self-made billionaire property developer and philanthropist enjoyed filling his homes with objects that told a story. Now, as his widow prepares to sell their collection, valued by Sotheby’s Paris at more than €15mn, the Davidsons’ own story lingers in the background.

Back in 2015, their adult children embarked on legal proceedings to take possession of more than £500mn of their parents’ assets, including a Jacobean mansion in Gloucestershire and a villa in the south of France, thanks to the structure of a tax-sheltering family trust fund. Davidson and his wife Brigitta later sued their children for the return of £17mn of items from the trust, including its art and other collectibles; a case that was settled out of court. The couple wrote about their experience in the 2018 book To Trust Or Not To Trust.

The situation is not something that Sotheby’s are dwelling on, nor are they commenting directly on whether any of the items to be offered in November were among those returned through the litigation settlement. Henry House, Sotheby’s deputy chair of furniture and single-owner sales, underlines though that “nothing is contentious”.

The Manny Davidson story has heartwarming tales, too. These include narrowly escaping a Blitz bomb in London during the second world war. Aged only 13, he saw that a neighbour’s house was on fire and rushed out to help before seeing his own home ablaze. He later enlisted in the Royal Air Force and made his money after joining his father’s property business, meeting his wife of more than 60 years after her Jewish Polish family had fled Nazi Europe for the UK.

Those who knew Davidson speak of a man “driven by curiosity, determination and compassion,” says the British politician Shaun Woodward, who first met him in 1992. Woodward made his own headlines in 1999, when he defected from the Conservative party to join rival Labour and then again, in 2016, when he revealed he was gay. “Manny was always supportive, when I crossed the [political] floor, when my wife and I separated and I came out. There was never any criticism, he was always up for knowing more, always asking how he could help,” Woodward says. 

The same spirit of discovery informed Davidson’s collecting and charitable causes, Woodward says: “He found ways to put people or things together, unlock their potential, and make something more out of them.” Of the items in his collection, which includes 53 snuff boxes as well as a fine selection of clocks and Renaissance maiolica (colourful Italian pottery), “he could tell you the story of each of them,” Woodward says.

Sotheby’s Henry House highlights some of the connections within the collection. There is a painting by the 17th-century Amsterdam portraitist Thomas de Keyser of the silversmith Christian van Vianen, dressed in black luxury and sat with a tall silver salt behind him (est €400,000-€600,000). A similar salt cellar, likely made by one of the German makers Guillaume or Gabriel van den Velden, c1600, is also among the items for sale (est €40,000-€60,000).

Other silver objects include a set of 12 of the Royal German silver table candlesticks, made to mark the wedding of Maria-Josepha of Saxony and Louis, Dauphin of France in 1747, a marriage that secured a meaningful political alliance. House confirms that two of these had previously been owned by the Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe — they appear in the background of photographs of her published in Modern Screen magazine in 1953 (the set of 12 is estimated between €100,000-€150,000). There is also a pair of Henry VIII parcel-gilt silver spoons, made in 1544, whose provenance has been traced to the powerful American banker JP Morgan until they were sold from his collection in 1982 (est €20,000-€30,000).

The highest estimates of the sale are for two portraits, the unflinchingly realistic “A Young Man, Wearing a Turban, Holding a Roemer: The Fingernail Test” (c1648-52) by the increasingly popular Flemish painter Michael Sweerts (€500,000-€700,000). Estimated at the same level is Peter Paul Rubens’s “Head study of a boy” (c1614), a painting whose attribution to the Flemish artist had been rejected by the stringent vetting committee at the Tefaf Maastricht fair in 2007. Davidson spotted it in a back room at the fair, ignored the vetter’s caution and immediately bought it, confirms George Gordon, Sotheby’s worldwide co-chair of Old Master paintings and drawings. The work was later found to have been sawn off from the same plank of oak as a Rubens study of the same ruddy model, which sits in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Sotheby’s has named the sale The Manny Davidson collection: A life in Treasures and Benevolence, in recognition of Davidson’s support of good causes, including museums, medical charities (notably Bowel & Cancer Research) and the London Jewish Cultural Centre. All the proceeds from the Sotheby’s sale will go to the Manny and Brigitta Davidson charitable foundation, the auction house confirms.

Such generosity was not indiscriminate. Woodward describes Manny Davidson as someone who was “capable of being both soppy and tough”. He explains: “He had a strong sense of doing what was right, whether for his charitable endeavours, his group of friends or his property developments. Within all of this is the Shakespearean tragedy with his children and, of course, there are two sides to everything, but I know it was very, very, very painful to both of them [Manny and Brigitta].” Davidson’s collecting of art and other objects seems an extension of a compassionate but complex character. Woodward describes the Sotheby’s offering as “a collection of things that are interesting, that are romantic, in the sense of telling a story. The collection is Manny and vice versa.”

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