Les and Milly Paris began their legendary New Zealand art collection soon after they were married in 1963 when they acquired a portrait of a Maori Boy by Peter McIntyre, a purchase that Les later confessed to having lied about as it was so seemingly beyond their means, claiming instead that it was a gift from grateful clients. From these inauspicious beginnings the Paris’s went on to build one of the largest, most finely nuanced and well-provenanced private art collections in Australasia.
