LONDON.- Christie’s 20th Century Season will launch on 27 February with Hidden Treasures: Impressionist & Modern Masterpieces from An Important Private Collection, a prestigious collection of 23 seminal works by the leading Impressionist and Modern artists. Hidden Treasures will be led by Claude Monet’s Saule pleureur et bassin aux nymphéas (1916-19, Estimate on Request). Further highlights include Paul Cézanne’s Nature morte de pêches et poires (1885-87, Estimate on Request) and Vincent van Gogh’s historically important Antwerp period portrait Portrait de femme: buste, profil gauche (1885, estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000), one of only two works painted in Antwerp specifically mentioned in correspondence with his brother Theo. The collection precedes the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 27 February 2019. The series of 20th Century auctions will take place from 21 February to 7 March 2019.

The Evening Sale will be led by a group titled An Adventurous Spirit: An Important Private Collection Sold to Benefit a Charitable Foundation. The group consists of six paintings of rare importance and quality by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Édouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini. Further highlights include Claude Monet’s Au bord du fjord de Christiania (1895, estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000), Deux figures au tronc d'arbre jaune by Le Corbusier (1937, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000), Edgar Degas’s Danseuses dans une salle d'exercice (Trois Danseuses) (1873, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000), Pablo Picasso’s Nature morte au crâne de taureau (1942, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000) and Alexej von Jawlensky’s boldly coloured Blaue Schürze (1909, estimate: £2,000,0003,000,000).

The Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper and Day Sales will follow on 28 February. These are complemented by the biannual online-only sale dedicated to Picasso Ceramics, which is open for bidding from 22 February to 2 March 2018. Estimates begin at £600, offering works by the artists that shaped the history of art during the 20th century to collectors of every level.

HIDDEN TREASURES
Tracing the key artistic movements that defined the late 19th and 20th centuries, the collection is comprised of 23 works. The earliest painting is Renoir’s Sentier dans le bois (1874-77, estimate: £7,500,000-10,500,000). Nearly three-quarters of a century later, Matisse completed Danseuse assise sur une table, fond rouge (1942, estimate: £4,500,000-7,000,000), a vibrant and striking exploration of the femme-fleur and chronologically the final painting in this group.

Leading highlights include Monet’s Saule pleureur et bassin aux nymphéas, which was once in the collection of the artist’s son Michel. It is an incandescent monumental-scale canvas conceived in conjunction with his Grandes décorations, the series of 22 waterlily paintings that he donated to the French state to commemorate the end of the First World War.

Cézanne sought to distil the transient phenomena of nature into an ideal, abstract order. His magisterial Nature morte de pêches et poires is imbued with a dignity and restraint that befits the artist’s goal, and is one of the most modern and timeless of the artist’s iconic still lifes. The work was first owned by Ambroise Vollard, who acquired Nature morte de pêches et poires directly from the artist. Vollard was key to the popularity and sale of Impressionist masterpieces across Europe, and sold the work to the important early German collector of Impressionist art, Kurt von Mutzenbecher. The work then spent many years with another key German collector of Impressionism, Otto Henkell, before joining the renowned United States collection of Col. Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch in the 1960s. Nature morte de pêches et poires has not been seen in public for over 30 years.

The signature vigour of the brushwork, the vivid characterisation of the young female model, and no less the startling appearance of the large red hair ribbon –– a flourish without precedent in the earlier art of Vincent van Gogh — have made Portrait de femme: buste, profil gauche the most often illustrated and representative of the small number of oil paintings that are known to exist from the painter’s three-month stay in Antwerp. He left for Antwerp on 28 November 1885 and soon after arrival indeed started painting the picturesque monuments of the city and sought out models for making portraits. None of the painted townscapes mentioned in his letters survived, but five portraits out of what must have at least been a group of nine did. Four are currently in the Van Gogh Museum, Portrait de femme, buste, profil gauche is the fifth. Further artists in the collection include Edgar Degas, Kees van Dongen, Aristide Maillol, Emil Nolde, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, Édouard Vuillard, and Maurice de Vlaminck.

AN ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT
An Adventurous Spirit provides a remarkable view of a unique collection across many fields, from Impressionism to 20th Century Design, which was shown in beautiful homes in London, Saint Tropez and Saint Barths. Six major paintings by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Édouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini will highlight the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale. The most important painting by Paul Signac to come to auction in 20 years, Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892, Estimate on Request) is one of the first and finest works that the artist painted in St Tropez. Rendered in Signac’s quintessential pointillist style, this painting is a masterpiece of the artist’s Opus works and is set to achieve a new auction record for the artist. A rare, and only recently rediscovered Impressionist masterpiece, Gustave Caillebotte’s Chemin montant (Estimate on Request), painted in Trouville in 1881, brings together the two main aspects of the artist’s oeuvre: the iconic urban figure paintings of the 1870s, and his landscapes and garden scenes of the next decade. With its daring composition and use of bold planes of colour, Félix Vallotton’s En promenade (painted circa 1895, estimate: £1,200,000-1,600,000) encapsulates the artist’s mastery of the pictorial vocabulary of Les Nabis. This masterful painting has been requested for the forthcoming exhibition on the artist to be held at the Royal Academy, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2019. Giovanni Boldini’s Portrait of John Singer Sargent (1890, estimate: £200,000-300,000) is a vivid testament to the friendship between two of the leading portraitists of fin-de-siècle Paris. This portrait, one of three that Boldini painted of Sargent, dates from a pivotal period in the artist’s career during which he received widespread acclaim for his unique form of portraiture, capturing a host of socialites and actresses, as well as fellow artists and friends, including Whistler, Verdi, Degas and Paul Helleu.

CLAUDE MONET
Monet had always been concerned with the transformative effects of winter, capturing the fleeting effects of ice, fog, snow and frost. Seeking to find the most authentic winter scenery, Monet travelled to Norway, arriving on 1 February 1895. Au bord du fjord de Christiania (1895, estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000) depicts the crystal blue waters
of the fjord lapping against the small, isolated islands that dot this stretch of water.

LE CORBUSIER
On a monumental scale, two nude figures serve as the abstracted protagonists of Le Corbusier’s masterpiece Deux figures au tronc d’arbre jaune of 1937 (estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000). Included in the important retrospective of the artist held in Zurich in 1938, this large and impressive composition, not seen in public since the early 1980s, presents the artist’s favoured motif of this period: the female nude.

PABLO PICASSO
Painted on 9 May 1942, the vibrant Nature morte au crâne de taureau (1942, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000) emerged during a period of intense reflection in Picasso’s painting, as he endured the hardships and claustrophobia of life in occupied Paris. Nature morte au crâne de taureau will be offered at auction for the first time on 27 February. Focusing on the ordinary objects in his studio, the people closest to him, and the comings and goings of his daily experiences in Paris, his paintings, drawings and sculptures during this period chronicle the everyday life of the city during German invasion.

ALEXEJ VON JAWLENSKY
Painted in 1909, and seen in public for the first time in almost 100 years, Blaue Schürze emerged during one of the most intensively creative and experimental periods of Alexej von Jawlensky’s artistic career, as he endeavoured to translate his visions of the external world through a unique, inner subjective spirit.

EDGAR DEGAS
Edgar Degas’s Danseuses dans une salle d'exercice (Trois Danseuses) (1873, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000) is among the first depictions of dancers that the artist created and introduces the themes and motifs that would preoccupy the artist for the rest of his life: the dancer and the rehearsal studio, movement and light, artifice and spontaneity. This small scale tour de force has been in the same noble French family collection for over 80 years, and has not been seen at auction since the prestigious Rouart sale of 1912.