SAN FRANCISCO — In 1990, Dianne Feinstein retreated to a beach house on the coast of Northern California after she lost a grueling race to become the state’s governor. She was 57, and her political career appeared to have peaked at “mayor of San Francisco.” She told friends that she was thinking about leaving public life for good.

On the day after the election, former President Jimmy Carter sent her a handwritten note. “I’ve won some & lost some, so I can share some of your feelings,” wrote Carter, who had lost his bid for a second term in the White House 10 years earlier. That defeat at the time had seemed “a tragedy.” But since then, he went on, his life had been fuller and more productive than he could have ever imagined.

Two years later, Feinstein won a seat in the Senate that she held until she died at 90 last year.

Her vacation refuge in Stinson Beach, California, has a new owner. Her official papers — some 5,000 boxes just from her years in the Senate — are at the Stanford University library archives.

“Two serious groups are circling” the stately Washington, D.C., manor that she and her husband bought after her Senate victory, according to Ben Roth, the real estate agent handling the property.

As for the rest of Feinstein’s legacy? Much of that is also for sale now.

On Tuesday in Los Angeles, at a starting bid of $800 to $1,200, Carter’s note of encouragement went up for auction at Bonhams. The event included not only scores of the senator’s memorabilia, but hundreds more pieces of art that she owned, her home decorations, her books and even her jewelry.

The trove is an archive of a life that was rich in many senses — wealth, accomplishment, adventure. But the auction also has rekindled memories in California political circles of the bitter final stretch of the senator’s tenure.

A lifelong guardian of the dignity of her office, Feinstein struggled to function in her last term. And toward the end of her life, a legal and financial dispute erupted among the trustees overseeing the fortune amassed by her and her husband, financier Richard Blum, who died about a year and a half before she did.

To many who knew Feinstein, the public display of her personal artifacts seems far from the epilogue she might have wanted: With her pearls and scarves and formal manners, the senator, who grew up in affluence and died with significant wealth, was an icon of professional restraint.

“I think Dianne would have found it unusual to have her items auctioned off to strangers,” said Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco and a friend since her first campaign for local office. “I hope that when I pass on, my family won’t do that to me.”

Court records indicate that the senator’s family actually has little say in the estate’s liquidation, which is being conducted based on what Blum and Feinstein laid out in their complex trust. The dispute last year — which centered largely on whether Blum’s trustees were fulfilling his obligation to pay for the senator’s home health care and whether they should sell the Stinson Beach house — moved to mediation after the senator died, records show.

Much of the case, which had Blum’s trustees on one side and Feinstein’s daughter on the other, representing her mother, appeared to be rendered moot after the senator died Sept. 29, 2023.

In an interview, the senator’s daughter, Katherine Feinstein, a retired superior court judge in San Francisco, said that she had made peace with the winding down of the estate, and that her mother had already supplied her and her daughter, the senator’s only grandchild, with a wealth of memories.

“It has been a year,” she said. “My fondest wish now is for my mother’s cherished things to end up in the hands of people who care about them.”

Victoria Gray, deputy chair for Bonhams North America, said last year’s disagreements did not affect the auction, which is titled “Legacy of a Stateswoman: The Personal Collection of Senator Dianne Feinstein.”

“As with many blended families, there was some friction, but none of this has been a problem,” Gray said.

Friends of the family said the sale made more sense than it might seem to outsiders who had not amassed the personal effects of more than a half-century in public office or the contents of multiple mansions. The senator’s main residence, a 9,500-square-foot home on Lyon Street in San Francisco, is being readied for sale, and Bonhams selected many of the auction items from those rooms and from her 7,185-square-foot home in Washington.

In addition, they said, there are still many mundane household items, including furniture and flatware, to dispose of. And not to mention the senator’s clothes, which are likely to be donated to charities.

“You know that rule about how every 10 years, you should pretend you’re moving and weed out your belongings?” said Jim Lazarus, a longtime aide who served as a liaison with Stanford University for the senator’s papers. “Well, that did not happen in the Feinstein household. There’s a lot of stuff — a lot of stuff.”

Highlights were on display for several weeks in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Bonhams whetted appetites for the live auction Tuesday with cocktail receptions and tours for media and potential VIP buyers. There were the chunky gold necklaces and fine pearls that were the senator’s hallmarks. There were brooches from Tiffany & Co., earrings from Bulgari, bangles from Italian jeweler Buccellati and a watch from Cartier.

There were Chinese figurines and blown-glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly. There was an 1863 painting of Vernal Falls by American artist Enoch Wood Perry Jr. that is believed to be the first formal depiction of the 317-foot landmark in Yosemite before it was a national park. There is a still life by the senator herself — one among scores that she handed out as gifts over the decades.

There was a wooden desk plaque from her time as mayor and a framed Senate roll call from when she unsuccessfully sought to censure President Bill Clinton in 1999 for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There was an autographed copy of the book “Know Your Power” by her fellow San Franciscan and friend, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“To Dianne, a woman who knows her own power,” Pelosi’s inscription says.

Interest was strong, Gray said, in line with a string of recent celebrity estate auctions that have captured the imaginations of collectors as the art market has struggled to rebound. (For instance, a Bonhams auction in 2022 of the personal library of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court sold out, with final bids that totaled more than $2.3 million, well over estimates.) More than 1,200 bidders registered for the event.