Swan style: inside the collections of Lee Radziwill, C.Z. Guest and others from Truman Capote’s orbit

One would be hard pressed to find a more glamorous era than New York City during the 1950s and 1960s, the backdrop of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, the latest television series from Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen and Michael Zam. The Gus Van Sant-directed show, which premiered on FX in January, follows the complex relationships of the revered writer Truman Capote and his high-society ‘swans,’ as he called them, who represented some of America’s most powerful and affluent women.

With an all-star cast, including Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, Diane Lane as Slim Keith and Chloë Sevigny as C. Z. Guest, the story is as dramatic as it is amusing, heart-breaking as it is riotous. Amidst the betrayal and scandal, one thing is undeniable: the characters’ utter glamour.

Over the years, Christie’s has had the pleasure of selling art, furniture, jewellery and other treasures belonging to the swans and more creatives in their orbit, with highlights including The Collection of Lee Bouvier Radziwill in 2019 and property from the Collection of Winston F.C. and C.Z. Guest in 2021. Ahead of the Feud finale on 13 March, we look back at some of the most memorable art and objects, each of which exudes the rarefied swan style that has forever cemented these figures in society and collecting history.

Truman Capote

Feud’s tempestuous ringleader is none other than Truman Capote, best known for penning the true-crime classic In Cold Blood. While Christie’s has sold many works depicting the legendary author, a couple items stand out, one being the autographed letter Capote wrote to Audrey Hepburn in 1960 congratulating her on landing the role of Holly Golightly in the film adaptation of his Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

A 1984 double-portrait hailed from the estate of Andy Warhol, who called Capote his ‘favourite writer’, saying: ‘I love the way he writes; I love the way he lives.’ Not only did the artist title his first solo exhibition in 1952 Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote; he also famously painted a portrait of Capote in exchange for a year’s worth of columns by the author for his magazine Interview.

C. Z. Guest

Lucy Douglas ‘C.Z.’ Guest was a woman of many talents — an actress, author, designer, gardener, figure skater, equestrian and style icon. ‘My mother’s favourite words were “discipline” and “self-discipline”, her son Alexander told Christie's in 2021. ‘She was a New Englander and she believed in being self-sufficient.’ Guest’s discerning nature extended into her homes, especially her Long Island residence, Templeton, designed by renowned French firm Maison Jansen and Stéphane Boudin.

She and her husband, Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, a descendent of the famed English Churchill family, were passionate collectors, especially of Asian art. Winston was exposed to Chinese culture and Chinese porcelains as a Marine in the Pacific theater during World War II. In 2021, Christie’s sold Chinese ceramics, Old Master drawings and Russian works of art from the Guests’ collection.

As a muse, C. Z. Guest was imaged by Warhol, Salvador Dalí and Cecil Beaton. Feud fans will undoubtedly recognise a sensual nude portrait of her by Diego Rivera: In vinum veritas (Portrait of C.Z. Guest) (1945) was exhibited a 2015 exhibition at Christie’s celebrating the history of its Rockefeller Center location through artists that were commissioned to create works for the landmark.

Lee Radziwill

Also immortalised by Warhol as evidenced in these chic polaroid prints, Lee Radziwill (née Caroline Lee Bouvier) was no stranger to exquisite, trendsetting taste — her older sister was none other than First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. A leading socialite and PR pro with a great interest in interior design, Radziwill’s New York and Paris apartments were featured in major design glossies, and she was a fixture on numerous best-dressed lists.

In 2019 Christie’s New York sold her collection, which featured everything from Gucci sunglasses to a scrapbook documenting presidential trips to India to upholstered furnishings from Radziwill’s striped green, pink and white New York bedroom. The sale’s top lot was Peter Beard’s Running Giraffe, 1960, which sold for $60,000, doubling its low estimate. A dear friend of Jackie Kennedy’s, Beard has previously been romantically linked to Radziwill.

Babe Paley

This 1962 portrait of Barbara ‘Babe’ Cushing Mortimer Paley, a magazine editor and the wife of CBS founder William S. Paley was sold at Christie’s in 2020. The artist and production designer Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel, who was a great friend of Babe’s. Messel won a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design in 1955 for his work on House of Flowers — a musical written by Truman Capote and Harold Arlen (a short story of the same name was published in Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

As seen on Feud and in the aforementioned portrait, Paley had an astonishing jewellery collection. Some of Paley’s timeless jewels sold at Christie’s include a turquoise, diamond and gold ring by Jean Schlumberger and a turquoise, diamond, sapphire and gold brooch by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Slim Keith

Born in Salinas, California, Nancy ‘Slim’ Keith, Lady Keith of Castleacre, was known for her radiant West Coast beauty and athletic physique. She garnered many admirers, including Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway. The socialite inspired Lauren Bacall’s character in To Have and Have Not, a 1944 film directed by Howard Hawks, Keith’s husband at the time. Keith would befriend Capote through Babe, and the two connected over their turbulent childhoods and glamorous ascents in society.

At the age of 22, Keith was placed on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland. She would grace the magazine’s best dressed list almost yearly while she was alive. In 2006, two of Keith’s Schlumberger designed brooches resurfaced at Christie’s. The jewels evoke the unwitting fashion icon’s singular style: entrancing and bold.

Katharine ‘Kay’ Graham

To say Capote’s choice of journalist Katharine ‘Kay’ Graham as the honouree of his famed 1966 Black and White Ball blindsided the swans would be an understatement. However, the celebrated publisher who helmed her family’s newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991, had impressive merits in her own right — not only was she the first 20th-century female publisher of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the Associated Press board, but her memoir, Personal History, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

The society doyenne had an eye for unique decorative pieces from China and India. Christie’s has previously sold a Chinese polychrome-decorated brown lacquer altar table, a pair of George II mahogany library armchairs upholstered in Indian printed cotton and a Ming dynasty hanging scroll with Graham provenance.