Douglas Modern Art Collection to Be Auctioned : Art: The works accumulated by Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, will go on the block in May. They are expected to bring as much as $10.4 million.

Actor Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, will sell 52 pieces from their art collection in May auctions at Christie’s New York. The biggest sale, scheduled for May 16, is expected to bring between $7.5 million and $10.4 million for 19 modern paintings and sculptures. The remaining lower-priced works, to be sold on May 4, 16, 22 and 30, are valued at a total of about $300,000.

Douglas has been strongly identified with the art world since he played Vincent van Gogh in “Lust for Life.” That experience made him an expert in painting Van Gogh-style crows in landscapes. There isn’t much call for crow painters, he jokes, and he has no aspirations to extend his repertoire, but he appreciates art, buys it whenever he travels and surrounds himself with a broad selection--from pre-Columbian sculpture and African masks to Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs and modern paintings.

Anne Douglas, the collecting force in the family, has had an eye for art since she left her native Belgium, went off to Paris and worked in an art gallery. “My wife has a wonderful feeling for a work of art. She can walk into a gallery and pick out the best thing when I might choose the worst,” Kirk Douglas said.

Now that they have been married for 35 years and lived with most of their collection since the ‘50s, they might seem unlikely sellers, but the Douglases have their reasons.

The most obvious is that they stand to make a substantial profit in a hot art market. They won’t be filling socks with the money and stuffing them under the mattress, however.

Half the auction proceeds will go to their family’s charitable foundation, which benefits the homeless and the Motion Picture Relief Fund. “Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes. When you reach a certain standard of living you should help others who are less fortunate,” Kirk Douglas said.

The other half of the money will start a new collection of contemporary art. As longtime art lovers who say they have been priced out of the Impressionist and modern market, the Douglases will switch to the more affordable contemporary field. Having met such distinguished figures as Georges Braque, Marc Chagall and Joan Miro and sometimes selected works from their studios, the couple plan to turn their attention to today’s living artists and launch a new collecting adventure.

They considered giving their collection to their four sons, but it didn’t seem practical. “No matter how you divide the paintings, it’s going to be wrong,” Kirk Douglas said, and high prices would probably preclude their sons from expanding a collection of modern art. Instead, the couple will bequeath their proposed contemporary art collection, along with the social conscience that is embodied in their foundation.

The plan to fund these two projects took shape slowly, they said. At first the notion of an auction was abhorrent to Anne Douglas, but the more they talked about it, she began to see the sale as an exciting challenge to learn more about contemporary art.

Parting with their treasures--still lifes by Braque, Chaim Soutine and Maurice de Vlaminck; Chagall’s paintings of magical visions; Edouard Vuillard’s domestic scenes; an early portrait by Piet Mondrian; a peaceful Balthus landscape; an Expressionist nude by Alexej Jawlensky--turned out to be a traumatic event, however. Last week, when Christie’s carried the artworks away from the couple’s home in Beverly Hills, Anne burst into tears. Kirk avoided the whole thing by going out and playing 18 holes of golf.

“I have mixed feelings,” Kirk Douglas said, as he looked around his denuded living room. “Sometimes when I see collections in private homes, it seems almost selfish that the art is kept out of public view. But when you sell, you break a connection with the artists and with art that has been part of your life.”

Are they betraying the famous artists who allowed them to visit their studios in Paris and the South of France, artists who have corresponded with them and given them artful mementos that hang in the couple’s den?

“No. The art belongs to history,” Anne Douglas said. Nonetheless, she will sorely miss such pieces as Chagall’s “Night Rider,” which is one of six works she borrowed from a dealer to dress up her future husband’s apartment for a party in 1955. When the party was over, they couldn’t bear to return all the artworks and ended up keeping three of them. “Night Rider,” a widely exhibited painting from Chagall’s Mexican period, is the only one that stood the test of time for the Douglases.

“The sale is a continuation,” Kirk Douglas observed, noting that their first collection would fund another and lead to the discovery of new artists. In fact, they have already begun to buy contemporary art. A painting by James Rosenquist hangs in a hallway, a water sculpture by Eric Orr is installed in the front patio and a bronze dog by British sculptor Elisabeth Frink overlooks the swimming pool.

The most valuable pieces in the May 16 auction are a 1945 Chagall painting, “Cheval et Enfant,” and a 1961 work by Jean Dubuffet, “Chasse Croise,” each estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million. A Balthus painting of a pigeon in a blue-gray landscape is valued at $700,000 to $900,000. Estimates for three Braque still lifes range from $300,000 to $700,000.

Christie’s May 16 sale of Impressionist and modern drawings and watercolors will feature a dozen of Antoni Clave’s set and costume designs for “Carmen.” A group of figure studies by Eugene Delacroix, valued at $6,000 to $8,000, will be sold on May 22 with 19th-Century works. Christie’s East, a sale room for lower-priced art and collectibles, will offer 18 paintings from the Douglas collection on May 4 and a Warren Brandt still life on May 30.

Anne Douglas plans to attend the May 16 auction. “I have to see where all of my children are going,” she said.

Her husband is not so sure. “The art has been part of our life pattern for 35 years and I will miss it. But I’m the sort of person who has no desire to see a movie once I’ve finished it. It’s over. I’m going on to a new phase of my life now and I don’t want to listen to the footsteps behind me,” he said.