A remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway hit film of the same name, The Thomas Crown Affair stars Pierce Brosnan in the title role as a debonair millionaire suspected of purloining a priceless painting, and Rene Russo as a sultry insurance investigator out to catch the thief. For Christopher Moore, President of Troubetzkoy Paintings, the film was an ideal project, both because the art would play a “starring” role in the film and because his gallery was called on at the very outset of the planning of the production.

Thomas Crown’s Oscar-nominated production designer, Bruno Rubeo, contacted Troubetzkoy Paintings. Troubetzkoy was recommended to him by the six-time Academy Award-nominated art director Dante Ferretti who had previously commissioned the gallery to create all of the paintings for his lavish, art-filled sets in Meet Joe Black and The Age of Innocence, the latter of which garnered Mr. Ferretti an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction.

“This project was wonderful because we really got in at the ground floor,” recounts Moore. “When Bruno came to us back in May of 1998, all he knew was that the character of Thomas Crown was meant to own a world-class art collection, but he had no set idea yet of what works it would be comprised of. Secondly, certain scenes were to be filmed at a ‘museum’, which would be based on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They had to devise a series of galleries and decide what periods and works they would contain. But most importantly, an extremely valuable painting is stolen in the film and it was yet to be determined what that would be. We were given the opportunity to really help shape the look of the film.”

The challenges for Moore were both cinematic and artistic. He had to consider not only what array of paintings a great collector would wish to possess, and which works from a world-renowned museum’s galleries to replicate, but also which of the world’s art masterpieces would show up best on film.

For the museum sets, Moore focused on nineteenth-century art and recreated nearly 100 works by painters such as Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh and Pissarro to fill three adjoining galleries. “The galleries were connected so we had to focus on a specific period; because that is how a real museum is laid out. There is a flow from one genre to the next. I chose mostly Impressionist works because, cinematically, the colors look beautiful on film.”

For Thomas Crown’s home, which would be comparable to New York’s Frick Mansion as a showcase for a priceless art collection, Moore allowed himself a broader spectrum. He reproduced close to fifty works ranging from a seventeenth-century still life by Dou, to several twentieth-century masterpieces by Picasso. In between came a series of paintings and drawings from a veritable “who’s who” of art history, including Sargent, Turner, Renoir, Gauguin, Rodin, Modigliani and Magritte.

“That was the greatest fun,” says Moore. “It was as if someone wrote you an imaginary blank check for a dream art shopping spree. Bruno and set decorator, Leslie Rollins, basically gave me carte blanche in the choice of works. The only thing I kept in mind as a limitation for the mansion was that I wanted lesser-known works by each artist, the kind that might actually be available on the market for a private collector, because anyone who knows art knows that the Mona Lisa, for example, is never going on the auction block!”

For the film’s “star” painting, the priceless stolen work around which the story revolves, Moore selected Claude Monet’s San Giorgio Maggiore. “I decided on this Monet for two reasons: one, because in our experience with our private clients, Monet is one of the most beloved and recognizable painters; and two, because the work had to be small enough to accommodate how the script outlined it was to be stolen.” Other “stellar” roles went to Manet’s Régates, Van Gogh’s Afternoon Siesta, and Pissarro’s Jardin Eragny.