Poet T.S. Eliot's widow's art to be auctioned in London

Art owned by T.S. Eliot’s widow Valerie will be auctioned off from Christie’s auction house later this year.

The collection, which is valued at $7.6 million, features pieces by artists such as Francis Bacon and Winston Churchill, were purchased using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, Cats , which was based off of T.S. Eliot’s verse Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats .

Deputy chairmen of Christie’s Europe, Orlando Rock, says Eliot’s widow bought art as a “celebration of the best of British,” The Washington Post reports.

“It was done on a very domestic scale,” Rock said of the collection. “It all fitted into the flat they lived in ... and became almost a shrine to everything T.S. Eliot had achieved.”

Rock spoke of Eliot’s relationship with his late widow, who died in November at the age of 86. The two met at the London publishing house Faber & Faber, where Valerie worked as a secretary. She had been obsessed with the poet since her teenage years. They married in 1957, when she was 30 and Eliot was 68.

Upon his death, Valerie guarded her husband’s legacy, refusing to cooperate with biographers. Surprisingly, however, she consented to the creation of a musical based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , which would become Weber’s famous Cats .

“Valerie’s devotion to her husband helped her form a particularly enlightened collection of British art, which she knew he would have applauded and cherished,” Rock said, according to CBC .

The couple did not have any children, and proceeds from the auction will go towards Eliot’s Old Possum’s Practical Trust, a charity for the arts set up by the poet to provide small grants to projects that intend to enhance performing arts in theatrical communities.

The auction will begin November 20 at Christie’s. Pieces from the collection are available to view in New York from June 1 until June 4 and in London from June 28 until July 2.