PARIS.- Christie's announced the sale of the JPHY Collection, comprising a live auction in Paris on 10 December, Masterpieces of Buddhist Art: Peaceful and Wrathful, and an online sale, Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian Art, open for bidding from 30 November to 11 December. Representing the finest collection of Indian and Himalayan Buddhist art to be offered on the international market in more than a decade, the JPHY Collection marks a landmark event for the global art market.
This is particularly true in Paris, where the JPHY Collection is set to rank among the French capital's most important collection sales of the autumn season, in a category where ensembles of this scale are exceptionally rare. Comprising masterpieces from the Himalayas, India, and China, and the ancient region of Gandhara, the approximately 280 lots span millennia of history and bear witness to the extraordinary technical and aesthetic diversity of Buddhist art. For decades, these works have embodied Jean-Pierre and Helga Yvergneaux's enduring fascination with the cultures of Asia, cultivated through a lifetime of passionate reading and study.
With a combined estimate of €12-17 million, the JPHY Collection reflects both the depth of the collectors' vision and the exceptional quality of the works assembled over decades.
"Jean-Pierre (MD-PhD) and Helga (Minouche) Yvergneaux are extraordinarily generous and humble individuals for whom the passion of collecting has always been an end in itself. Their collection is, without question, the most significant group of works to come to market in decades. More than 100 pieces in the sale are of museum quality." -- Edward Wilkinson, Global Head of the Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art Department, Christie's
An absolutely exceptional ensemble of Buddhist works of art, primarily of the Mahayana tradition, the collection assembled by Jean-Pierre and Helga Yvergneaux began shortly after their marriage in the early 1960s with a first acquisition from an antiques dealer in Brussels. At a time when these artistic traditions attracted little interest, the young couple were captivated by a Tibetan figure of Tara, the female bodhisattva renowned for her miraculous and benevolent powers. The refined gilding of the sculpture, together with the sense of serenity and compassion conveyed by the figure, sparked a lifelong passion. This fascination was further nourished by the travel writings of Alexandra David-Nel and by the many books on the Himalayas that they discovered and eagerly explored together.
Immersed in the cultures of these regions, Jean-Pierre and Helga Yvergneaux gradually built a remarkable collection distinguished not only by its breadth but also by its intellectual ambition. What began with later Tibetan and Chinese works evolved into a wide-ranging exploration of Buddhist art across Asia, extending back to the celebrated Gandharan sculptures of the second and third centuries, among the earliest known representations of the Buddha. Spanning nearly two millennia, the collection offers a fascinating panorama of Buddhist artistic creation, from “serene” devotional images to powerful “wrathful” tantric manifestations, revealing the extraordinary creativity with which Buddhist ideals have been expressed across cultures and throughout history.
Guided by the spiritual and aesthetic power of each work, Jean-Pierre and Minouche Yvergneaux built their collection through a succession of deeply personal discoveries. Among the most important is a fourteenth-century Crowned Buddha whose beauty, refinement and expressive presence make it one of the highlights of the sale. Equally remarkable are the sculptures of Vajrabhairava and Raktayamari, both attributed to the renowned fifteenth-century Tibetan artist Sonam Gyaltsen. Other outstanding works include an exceptional seventeenth-century Hevajra and a refined eighteenth-century Mahakala, both attributed to the Nepalese workshop associated with Tashi Lhunpo Monastery. These works, together with other major pieces from the collection, were featured in Jacques van Goidsenhoven's landmark publication Art Lamaque: Art des Dieux (Brussels, 1970), underscoring the quality and importance of the Yvergneaux collection from an early stage.
Other works, including the impressive and extremely rare fourteenth-century Hayagriva, as well as two exceptional Yongle-period bronzes bearing the dynasty's reign mark, were illustrated in Ulrich von Schroeder's seminal reference work Indo-Tibetan Bronzes (1981).
Reflecting their discreet nature, the Yvergneauxs never sought public recognition for their achievements as collectors. Instead, works from the collection were quietly lent to major museum exhibitions and scholarly publications, from Art Lamaque (Socit Gnrale and the Nepal-Belgium Friendship Association, Brussels, 1975) to the landmark exhibition held at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1977, as well as Cast for Eternity at the Ethnographic Museum of Antwerp in 2005 and The Dalai Lama exhibition in Zurich the same year, generally appearing simply under the designation "JPHY".
Yet the significance of the collection lies not only in its most celebrated masterpieces or its powerful tantric images. Demonstrating a profound engagement with the cultures that inspired their lifelong passion, it also encompasses devotional and ritual objects that illuminate the central role of Buddhism in everyday life across Asia. Taken together, these works offer a richer and more complete understanding of Buddhist artistic and religious traditions.
Over the decades, every object was acquired with care and conviction, whether through visits to galleries in Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris or at major international Asian art auctions in New York and London. The result is a collection distinguished not only by the quality of its individual works but also by the vision and intellectual curiosity that brought them together.
On 10 December, this remarkable collection will be offered at auction in Paris, presenting collectors and institutions with a rare opportunity to acquire works assembled over more than half a century of dedicated study, connoisseurship and passion.
