Aficionado extraordinaire Duffy lands first Daumier over phone

By Kristen Peterson

Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.

Five-thirty a.m. Patrick Duffy has already been awake 30 minutes.

He slept next to his cell phone, but awoke early, fearing Sotheby's had forgotten him. He calls London and waits in his home office, still in his bathrobe and slippers, for the auctioneer to get to Lot 71. Duffy hasn't even made coffee. No time.

Bidding begins. With every price offered, Duffy accepts with a simple and assertive "Yes." His main competition is another caller. As the price steadily rises, Duffy isn't backing down.

Finally the gavel slams and he hears someone bark, "Sold!"

"Who?" Duffy asks his surrogate bidder across the Atlantic, who responds simply:

"Congratulations, it's yours."

It was an intense 45 seconds, but 20 years after seeing his first Daumier, Duffy owns one.

The $15,000 ink wash on paper is small - just over 3 inches by 4 inches. It's not the Daumier oil painting that Duffy jokingly proclaimed that he'd sell his entire collection to buy.

But, Duffy says, "I would always regret passing it up. I felt so good. Nothing could have ruined that day."

Duffy first saw an Honore Daumier painting at a museum in Hamburg, Germany, and was entranced by the 19th century French caricaturist, painter and sculptor. A politically controversial and often censured artist, Daumier worked in lithographs and woodcuts, before revealing himself as a realist painter portraying the underclass.

Duffy has seen Daumier's work as part of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. He's seen Daumier at the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, at the Art Institute in Chicago and at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

When he won the bid on the Daumier, friends called with congratulations. One friend jokingly feigned being a reporter from ArtNews inquiring about his recent acquisition.

The tiny piece barely makes a dent in the very eclectic collection belonging to Duffy and his companion, Wally Goodman. They are art lovers, buying and selling according to their tastes. They live with almost 300 pieces of art, including works by William T. Wiley, Jess Collins, Richard Tuttle and Sol Lewitt. They also have a large collection of monochromatic works, which Duffy says gives him a mental break from "the craziness. It's a mini vacation."

The philanthropic couple have opened the doors to their home as a way to share the works with friends and acquaintances. They loan their works to museums. They donated a Fletcher Benton kinetic sculpture to the Solomon R. Guggenheim foundation and a Matthew Radford to the Las Vegas Art Museum, where they have also promised to donate a Wiley.

They rent a Summerlin home while their new home with "plenty of niches" is being built. In the interim, more than 200 works sit in storage. Some are in a back room, which Duffy refers to as a "treasure trove of God knows what."

The fact that they aren't on display tugs at Duffy: "I miss them desperately."

In a nook hangs an Albert Oehlen for which they've been offered a "vulgar price." But they'll wait. "We still want to live with it," Duffy says.

In the kitchen is a Julius Bissier watercolor on paper that they purchased for under $10,000 that they enjoy every morning at breakfast.

The Daumier piece arrived Monday, three weeks after the auction.

Where will it hang?

"It can't go near sunlight; so probably in the kitchen," Duffy says. "In the new house, it will probably go right next to my bed."