"Alain Delon was suffering from collectivitis, or severe collectingitis!" This diagnosis was made by Elizabeth Markevitch, who met him in the late 1980s, when the actor was keen to part with his bronze sculptures by Rembrandt Bugatti (1885-1916). She was working for Sotheby's at the time. "It pained him to sell them, but he'd just met the woman who went on to be the mother of his last children, and he wanted to make room. His property was totally overrun with artworks." And with good reason, he had accumulated around 40 of the bronzes.
Bugattis were one of his passions, as were animal sculptures in general. He had assembled what was undoubtedly the finest collection by a little-known artist, Georges-Lucien Guyot (1885-1973). Remember the days when he was shooting Le Guépard (The Leopard)? When asked if Visconti had influenced the formation of his taste, he denied it: "Visconti wasn't what you'd call a collector. He was in love with Bronzino, he had a few works, a few paintings, but not a collection," he told Le Monde in 2007. Markevitch believes, however, that his stays in Italy played a major role in shaping his eye: "Between two shoots, he would haunt museums. His collection of Italian drawings was fantastic."
As was Delon's collection of drawings altogether, one might add. Parisians were able to catch a glimpse of this in 2010, at the Drawing Salon held at the Palais de la Bourse. On display were Pontormo and Veronese, as well as works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Géricault and Degas. As he explained to Le Monde, "The drawing is the artist's first draft, his first thought." In this context, he confessed to a total love of Millet but had also acquired one of the very last drawings by Dürer to come up for public sale, depicting a beetle. "From right under the nose of Malle," he said with his trademark devastating smile. "Not Louis Malle, but his brother, the banker. It was a bit like in [the book and movie] L'Homme Pressé: The difference between the professionals and me is that they have a limit; beyond a certain bid, they stop. I don't."
At one time, all his money was being spent on old art. "Some people buy cars, others go to whores, but I prefer paintings." While he bought them with his gut, he also never stopped learning more about them: "When he fell in love with an artist or a period, he would dive in, read everything, and know how to talk about it," confirmed Markevitch.
He loved paintings too, with a preference for the 19th century, and an absolute passion for Géricault – "I have a unique painting of his, no doubt painted in the morgue, on the wooden plank that was pulled out, the upper bodies of a man and a woman united in death" – as well as Delacroix, Millet and Corot. He also made forays into the 20th century, with the Fauves, Braque in particular, of whom he owned one of two views of the Saint-Martin Canal. He also acquired a very fine 1950s ensemble, from the Cobra group to abstracts from the School of Paris such as de Staël, Manessier, Riopelle and Degottex. He sold the latter group at auction in 2007 because, he said, he loathed posthumous sales.