There are collections that impress by pedigree and others that intrigue because they reveal the eye — and life — of the person who assembled them. The collection of Jeanne-Marie de Broglie, coming to auction at Christie’s Paris on September 30, manages to do both.

Born into the Maillé and Radziwiłł families, Jeanne-Marie might easily have followed the expected path of her generation — one she later recalled as a childhood of “well-bred boredom.” Instead, she found her way into the avant-garde art world, working alongside legendary dealer Daniel Cordier and helping him open his Paris gallery. In 1968, she became Christie’s representative in Paris, beginning an association that would last some four decades and eventually see her become Christie’s first Chairwoman in Europe.

Her own collection is wonderfully revealing. Degas and Dubuffet live alongside Picasso, the Lalannes and Diego Giacometti; family jewels mingle with Cartier and Fabergé, inherited pieces and objects acquired over a lifetime. There is no obvious hierarchy, just the unmistakable sense of someone who knew what she liked — and knew what she was looking at. Take George Grosz’s tiny 1935 Passersby, New York. At barely six inches high, the wonderfully observed pair is just the sort of unexpected discovery that makes this collection so appealing.

 

Naturally, I went straight to the jewelry, where the range is as revealing as the rest of the collection. A wonderfully quirky owl brooch immediately caught my eye,

while a magnificent late-19th-century diamond Maltese cross brings us back to Jeanne-Marie’s own history. From the Radziwiłł family, it was rediscovered and given to her by her children.

Then there are the small treasures: a 1930 Cartier nécessaire in lapis lazuli, sapphires, diamond and gold; a nephrite cigarette case by Fabergé; groups of gold, hardstone, bloodstone and grey stone seals; and several elegant old cigarette cases. Objects from another era, perhaps, but also reminders of how much beauty once went into the things people carried and used every day.

Her eye wandered well beyond the precious. A wonderfully eccentric pair of circa-1900 bamboo armchairs, their patinated frames picked out with gilt lines and upholstered in floral velvet, would have stopped me in my tracks even without a famous name attached.

Equally irresistible are François-Xavier Lalanne’s Petite Cocotte planters. Part sculpture, part planter and entirely charming, the pair brings a touch of Lalanne’s characteristic wit to the collection.

 

And then there is the Diego Giacometti.

 

Jeanne-Marie commissioned her unique bronze and glass Berceau coffee table directly from the artist around 1981. Perched on its sculptural framework is Séraphine, her beloved Jack Russell, immortalized in bronze. She even held a dinner to unveil the table, with Giacometti among the guests. Furniture, sculpture and affectionate portrait all in one — and probably the piece I would most like to spirit home.

The collection runs to 155 lots, from a unique Claude Lalanne Structure végétale chandelier and important works of art to charming objects with estimates in the hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands.

It is the sort of sale worth browsing slowly. Not necessarily to bid — although there are temptations at many price points — but for the pleasure of seeing a collection in which provenance and personality are so thoroughly intertwined. Jeanne-Marie de Broglie may have inherited the pedigree, but the eye was entirely her own.