Russell ’81 Finds “Sleeping Beauties” in the Art World

When you’re a specialist in European sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts for a world-renowned art and luxury auction house, there is little that is more thrilling than discovering works that are extremely rare or that have been lost without a trace for centuries. 

Will Russell ‘81 has had many of these experiences. Recently he helped bring to sale an exquisite, enameled silver and gilt bronze elephant automaton clock with darting eyes and a howdah, or seat, in the form of a castle tower. The stunning timepiece dates to the early 1600s and among its owners were members of the Rothschild family in Germany. 

And there was the late Renaissance marble figure, created in the 1580s, of Andromeda, who in Greece mythology is rescued from death by the Greek hero Perseus and becomes his queen. The celebrated sculpture had been untraceable for 264 years and was found hidden in a Gilded Age tower in upstate New York, wrapped in dirty packing blankets. 

“She had been there for 35 years, like a sleeping beauty,” says Will of the perfectly preserved sculpture. Christie’s sold Andromeda for a bit over $500,000. 

Still another extraordinary moment involved a private collection of museum quality art that disappeared in the late 1970s when its wealthy owner, Paul Doll, who was prominent in New York society, turned his back on civilization and vanished into the Appalachian Mountains. The works had been made for kings, princes, and popes and were historically significant and so rare that no other examples had been seen at auction for decades, Will says.   

When Doll died in 2020, his estate came to light, and the collection was found in a North Carolina rainforest, having not been seen in almost half a century. “It had just fallen off the art world’s radar,” Will says. 

Will says his interest in art history is “very closely tied” to European history and that “I can certainly credit Jim Carter’s Russian history course on getting me pointed in that direction.” 

After ninth grade, Will attended Pomfret School, then Connecticut College, and he earned an M.A. at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Before graduate school, he worked for Skinner’s, the Boston auction house, and after, he was awarded fellowships at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. From 1996-2000, Will was the curator of the Lobkowitz Collections in Prague, the most important private art collection in the Czech Republic.  

Will has worked for Christie’s since 2000. He explains his role as head of European sculpture for North and South America this way: “I look for great works of art, and I compete to get them in for sale, research them, and then sell them at auction.” 

Right after he joined the auction house, he was involved with the spectacular sale of French decorative arts from the Riahi Collection that realized $40 million, the highest total for a single-owner sale of French furniture at auction. Since, he has worked on many of the most important decorative arts collections sold by Christie’s. 

Will is based at Rockefeller Center in NYC, but Christie’s has offices in London and Paris, too, and he spends time in all three places. Sometimes his travels have taken him to such diverse locations as a castle perched on the Hungarian/Austrian border and a fishing lodge in Patagonia. 

The best part of his job, Will says, is that rare pieces come to his attention in different ways. “Every project, and every collector, is individual and original.” 

Will and his spouse, Rob McQuilkin, owned a farmhouse in the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic for twenty years. They sold it in the summer of 2016, “thinking our life was now largely in the U.S., and that the U.S. was headed in just the right direction, politically. Because what possibly could go wrong…?”

The couple gave up their NYC apartment during the pandemic and moved full time to their country house in Tuxedo Park, in the Hudson River Valley. There, Will enjoys tending to his orchard and meadows, and the couple keep company with their rescue cat, Xeny. 

Rob is the founding partner of Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents, and over his career in publishing he has shepherded noted books of fiction, poetry, memoir, history, and cultural criticism into print and has worked closely with authors including Anita Hill, Phillip Lopate, Natasha Trethewey, and Lois Gould. 

Will’s Fenn years definitely laid some groundwork for his career, he says, and they inspired his future love of travel. “Mme. [Patsy] Edes’ French class got me started on a lifelong connection to France. Her seventh grade exchange trip to Paris was a revelation,” he says. “My Paris trips for Christie’s are, hands down, the best part of my job.” 

Those years also nurtured his natural curiosity. A vivid Fenn memory is his English class with Tom Beal, “who was simply amazing.” When Will gave a book report on Alive, the story of the rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, he was excited “to be allowed to read aloud the part where they first experimented with cannibalism!”

Will says he was very shy when an adolescent, an age that can be challenging for most young boys, but that “looking back, I realize what an unusual place Fenn was. It provided an accepting, innovative, and original atmosphere.”