TEXAS BUSINESSMAN WHO REACHED SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST LIVED LIFE OF CURIOSITY
RICHARD “DICK” BASS was an oilman, globetrotting adventurer and collector.
During his accomplished life, he was an officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex in Task Force 77 in the Sea of Japan. He co-founded the Snowbird resort in Utah. He reached the summit of the highest mountain on each continent. And he was a lover of art – filling his University Park home with his vast art collection.
EVENT
HERITAGE ESTATES SIGNATURE® AUCTION 5239 is scheduled for Feb. 20-21, 2016, in Dallas and online at HA.com/5239. For information, contact Meredith Meuwly at 214-409-1631 MeredithM@HA.com.
Jim Bass told The Dallas Morning News that his father’s life was transformed by his fifth-grade poetry teacher, who gave him his love of poetry. “What she left with him was the sense that life is much, much more than the material. It is all about one’s endeavors into new things and learning and a love of the human condition.”
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Flower Seller
Oil on canvas laid on panel
28 x 22 in.
Estimate: $15,000-$25,000
From the Estate of Richard D. Bass
His art collection was another important part of his life, adds Heritage Director of Appraisal Services Meredith Meuwly. Bass often attended auctions to buy pieces of art for his homes and his ski resort. The collection includes American, European and Asian paintings, prints, sculpture, furniture and decorative arts.
“Richard Bass was a passionate art lover and added to his collections regularly from his travels all over the world,” Meuwly says. “In the early 1980s, he purchased an American Airlines lifetime pass that afforded him and a companion unlimited first-class travel. He took great advantage of this travel package and explored the world visiting museums and buying art that he liked.”
Bass passed away July 26, 2015, at the age of 85 surrounded by family in Dallas.
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The Gipsies’ Tent
Oil on canvas
32 x 42 in.
Estimate: $15,000-$25,000
From the Estate of Richard D. Bass
Property from the Estate of Richard D. Bass is featured in Heritage’s Estates Signature® Auction scheduled for Feb. 20-21, in Dallas. Among the pieces are paintings by Theodore Wores and George Morland.
Morland was born in London in 1763. His celebrated painting The Inside of a Stable resides at the National Gallery in London and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1791. His stock in trade was the depiction of tumbledown farmyards, harmless gypsies, happy peasants, bumbling farmers, fishermen and shipwrecks in the style of the highly popular Swiss painter Philipp de Loutherbourg.
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Gray Hawk’s Legacy, 2000
Bronze, Ed. 32/40
Estimate: $8,000-$12,000
From the Estate of Richard D. Bass
Wores was born in San Francisco in 1859 and studied at the San Francisco School of Design and the Royal Academy in Munich. He came to know the city’s Chinatown as a child, when he walked home from his father’s hat business through the bustling Asian community. “His methods of painting and distribution were revolutionary,” Meuwly says. As an oil painter, Wores was inspired by his travels to Japan. He worked with the best available materials but without sketches, inventing as he worked. “The finished product often had the spontaneity and bravura of a Continental oil sketch.”
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Thunder at Little Big Horn, 1992
Bronze, Ed. 2/30
Estimate: $3,000-$5,000
From the Estate of Richard D. Bass