NEW YORK—In his legendary academic career, the art historian Julius S. Held (1905–2002) specialized in the giants of the Northern Renaissance, but in his private collection, his tastes were eclectic and idiosyncratic. “As a scholar working at various universities, he didn’t have a huge amount of money to indulge in works of art, so he had to buy interesting, slightly quirky pictures that fit his budget,” said Ben Hall, head of Old Masters and 19th-century art at Christie’s, which this week is offering 257 works from the Held collection in a two-part sale titled "The Scholar’s Eye: Property from the Julius Held Collection" (est. $1.7–2.6 million).

“It’s a collection formed by a man who’s not necessarily interested in the obvious either in terms of attribution or subject matter,” said Hall.

If Held the scholar is well known for his studies of Rubens and Rembrandt, Held the collector is harder to pin down. His collection, which at its height numbered some 1,000 works, includes art from the 14th to 20th centuries and stretches across various nationalities and mediums. You’ll find everything from Italian heraldic plaques to anonymous 19th-century photographs to satirical Max Beckmann drypoints. There are even works made by notable friends and family members, including the celebrated art historian Meyer Shapiro, a colleague at Columbia University, and Held’s daughter, the painter Anna Held Audette.

To get some personal insight into the scholar and collector, ARTINFO spoke to Anne Lowenthal, whose relationship with Held spanned several decades, beginning in the 1960s when she studied under him as a Columbia graduate student. Lowenthal, now an independent scholar, went on to teach at Barnard College, which boasts an auditorium bearing Held’s name, and to co-edit a volume of his writings, Rubens and His Circle: Studies by Julius S. Held (Princeton University Press, 1982).

What emerged from the discussion was a portrait of a man whose connoisseurship, relatively modest resources, and deep knowledge of his art stand in stark contrast to the stereotypical collector of today. Neither a speculator nor a prestige-seeker, Held was above all someone with a deep passion for art and a fascination with the creative process. According to Lowenthal, he did not simply collect art, he lived with it.

“His primary interest was quality,” she said. “Good condition was extremely important to him. A big name was not. We don’t know a lot about some of these artists.”

Click on the photo gallery above to read what Lowenthal had to say about eight standout works from the Julius Held collection and why they appealed to the late professor.