Tim Llewellyn was a commanding figure in the international art world for over half a century. Born into a family with strong ties to the art market, he developed an early love of Old Master paintings and on leaving Cambridge in 1969 joined the relevant department at Sotheby’s, where a winning combination of expertise and business acumen earned him a directorship only five years later, followed by promotion to head of department in 1979. Rising to the position of overall Managing Director in 1984, Tim became Chief Executive in 1991 and Deputy Chairman in 1992, steering the company through some of the most turbulent and transformative changes in its history and overseeing some of its most important sales both in London and abroad.
Tim Llewellyn, by Andrew Festing, 1982 (photograph by Fiona Campbell)
Although his heart would always lie in the art of the past, Tim’s knowledge and interests also extended to the modern, and in 1994 he embarked on a highly successful second career as Director of the Henry Moore Foundation, serving in this role for over a decade until his retirement in 2007.
Along the way, and in later years, he was appointed to several key positions in the academic and museum world, acting at various times as a Trustee of Kettle’s Yard and the Friends of the Courtauld Institute of Art, and as a Council member of the Walpole Society and the Harvard University Center for Italian Studies at Villa I Tatti, as well as Chairman of the Burlington Magazine Foundation, the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, and the Council of the British School at Rome. In recognition of his service, Tim was awarded a series of distinguished honours, including the Order of Cultural Merit from the Republic of Poland, an honorary doctorate from the University of Southampton, and in 2007 the OBE.
A published art historian in his own right, Tim formed an extensive scholarly library of over 3,000 art books ranging from the Renaissance and Baroque to Post-War and Contemporary, encouraged by his wife Elizabeth, whose involvement in the field of Old Master drawings is attested by the many books inscribed to her personally by their respective authors.
The Llewellyn Library (photographs by Dirk Lindner)
Originally housed in a relatively conventional library interior that is captured in a portrait of Tim by painter and friend Andrew Festing, the books eventually grew so numerous that in 2002 Tim took the decision to commission a new interior with space to receive them all. The result was a daring and dramatic room, designed under Tim’s direction by architect John Robins, which brilliantly united the old and the new, creating the effect of a Renaissance studiolo for the modern age, with illuminated cabinets in dappled purple set off by natural and artificial wonders, including an Embriachi casket and an ostrich egg ingeniously adapted as a desk lamp. Only when the cabinets were opened was the purpose of the room revealed, with the hidden shelves within filled to overflowing from floor to ceiling.
Although Tim died in 2024, his books live on as a further testament to his remarkable personal and professional achievements. As a collector and scholar, he would surely have been pleased to know that they had ultimately been recorded. As a longtime auctioneer, he would just as surely have relished his own single-owner sale and with characteristic generosity wished his successor owners well.