LONDON.- Helena Newman, Worldwide Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department, said: “From Monet to Modigliani, this season’s London sales bring together outstanding works by some of the world’s most beloved and sought-after artists. Monet’s Nymphéas – an iconic image of his most celebrated subject – is at the same time radical and poetic, whilst Modigliani’s deeply arresting portrait of an unnamed youth unites the personal and the archetypal. These outstanding works have remained unseen for over half a century in their respective private collections and epitomise quality and freshness, both critical criteria for today’s global collectors. They will be offered alongside defining examples from landmark moments of Impressionism and Modern Art.”

Claude Monet, Nymphéas , 1908, oil on canvas (est. £25,000,000-35,000,000 / $31,880,000-44,630,000)
Thomas Boyd-Bowman, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sales in London, said: “This beautifully lyrical and softly ephemeral Nymphéas painted in 1908 is a timeless reflection of Monet’s vision and innovation. Acquired in 1932, it has remained a hidden treasure in the same family collection for decades and will now make its very first appearance at auction.”

Monet’s iconic series paintings – long considered the apogee of Impressionism – have in the past year reached new heights in the market. Most recently, at Sotheby’s in New York, his glowing haystacks from 1890 became the first work of impressionist art to exceed $100 million at auction, mere months after a record for a Venetian view was set at Sotheby’s in London.

The most famous images of all remain those of Monet’s beloved waterlilies, which have left an indelible mark on the history of art and become entrenched in the public consciousness. The artist’s first steps towards true abstraction, this ground-breaking series is widely considered his greatest achievement.

Monet’s meticulously designed water garden in Giverny verged on an all-consuming obsession, as the artist diverted the course of the river near his home and waded out into the waters daily to preserve the pristine beauty of the waterlilies. The result was a kaleidoscope of colour on his doorstep, forever changing with an unending variety of tones and forms.

Amongst Monet’s most desirable waterlilies are those from the period between 1904 – 1909, when Monet stripped away the banks of the pond, eliminated the horizon line and transformed the water into a mirror for the sky. With its decidedly free brushwork, this painting represents the most sophisticated qualities of his earlier, precise explorations whilst anticipating the innovations that were to follow in the Grandes Décorations housed in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

This stunning example of the Nymphéas series comes to auction along with two other works from the same collection – one an earlier work by Monet, depicting the astonishingly rich fields around Giverny in the spring of 1885; the other a dazzling pointillist depiction of the landscape surrounding Pissarro's home in a bucolic neighbouring village of Eragny, which he had purchased with financial aid from Monet.

Amedeo Modigliani, Jeune homme assis , les mains croisées sur less genoux , 1918, oil on canvas (est. £16,000,000-24,000,000 / $20,400,000-30,600,000)
James Mackie, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department in London, said: “A tender and transfixing image of a youth, this intimate portrait presents an unidentified young model with a sense of empathy, poignancy and serene beauty characteristic of the artist’s most accomplished paintings. The work was bought directly from the artist’s dealer Léopold Zborowski in 1927, and has been in the same family collection since then. For decades it has only been published as a black and white image, and will now emerge in its full splendour at auction this month.”

Modigliani’s transcendent portraits of anonymous youths are among the rarest in his oeuvre, with just a handful of depictions of such male sitters known – many of which are housed in museums across the world.

Towards the end of the First World War, as his health worsened, Modigliani sought safety and solace in the French Riviera. During his time in Provence, the artist felt a close connection to Cézanne and the legacy of his great portraits, an influence that is felt in these works. Having spent years immersed in the bohemian circles of Paris, in Nice and Cagnes Modigliani turned to painting anonymous sitters, executing a number of sublime portraits of peasants, servants, shop girls and children. The figures are ennobled with Modigliani’s elegance, but not at the cost of their innate character and humanity. With his mannerist elongated features and almond-shaped, vacant eyes, the model presents a powerful synthesis of all the characteristic traits that make Modigliani’s portraits so immediate and universal.

Joan Miró, Peinture (L’Air) , 1938, oil on canvas (est. £10,000,000 – 15,000,000 / $12,750,000-19,125,000)
Populated by playful creatures and animated shapes painted in bold primary tones, Miró’s Peinture (L’Air) resonates with a vibrant energy as it offers hopefulness in the face of the struggles of the Spanish Civil War. Part of a hugely important body of work where the artist engaged with the deteriorating political situation in his native country, the work offers insight into the artist’s state of mind during his exile in France. It was painted in the moment that saw the height of his engagement with political themes, the year after his monumental panel for the Spanish Pavilion was shown alongside Picasso’s Guernica at the 1937 World Fair in Paris.

The palette is restricted to the red, yellow and blue of the Estelada – the Catalan flag of independence – and the figures have been liberated from the oppression of the terrestrial realm and given the freedom of the sky. The inventive yet rigorously organised composition offers a renunciation of despair with a celebration of colour and form

Pablo Picasso, Homme à la pipe , 1968, oil on canvas (est. £5,500,0007,500,000 / $7,012,500-9,562,500)
Conceived on a grand scale and painted with seemingly limitless energy and invention in the autumn of 1968, Homme à la pipe is a striking example of Picasso’s ultimate burst of creativity. The emphatic swirls of paint that fill the background contrast with the strong verticals of the pipe and chair, creating a powerful dynamic within the composition. Having been acquired by the present owner in 1984, the monumental work has never previously been offered at auction.

The musketeer was a key figure, signalling an allusion to the Old Masters, and through that, the artist’s desire to paint himself into the European artistic canon. In these final years, Picasso immersed himself in masterpieces by the likes of Velásquez, Rembrandt, El Greco and Goya – projecting slides blown up to a gigantic scale onto his studio wall. He then incorporated the subjects and motifs of art historic tradition into works that are profoundly modern in their spirit and style.

Demand for the artist’s late works is now particularly strong, with a new world record for a 1960s work achieved in May at Sotheby’s New York, when a portrait of his wife Jacqueline Roque and their beloved Afghan hound sold for $54.9 million.

The Day Sale will be led by a fresh-to-the-market, spirited painting of a dashing musketeer painted in May 1967, conveying the personality of the artist himself, emphasised through the imagery of a brush and palette.

Camille Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée , 1897, oil on canvas (est. £3,500,0005,000,000 / $4,462,500-6,375,000)
An outstanding work from one of the most important series of Pissarro’s urban views, Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée brilliantly evokes the excitement and spectacle of the city at the fin-de-siècle – depicting the busy Parisian street with its pavement, buildings and trees bathed in a warm glow of the setting sun.

Pissarro’s series paintings of Paris in the late 1890s are amongst the supreme achievements of Impressionism, taking their place alongside Monet’s series of Rouen Cathedral, poplars and haystacks and the later waterlilies. The artist focused upon a single compositional device – the magnificent procession of the Boulevard Montmartre – working methodically for over two months at the window of his hotel room from dawn to dusk to depict the different combinations of light, weather and seasonal change.

Henri Matisse, Vase d’anémones , 1946, oil on canvas (est. £4,000,000-6,000,000 / $5,100,000-7,650,000)
A towering figure of the Surrealist movement in America, Enrico Donati’s legacy as an artist and cultural leader has been enriched by his reputation as a collector. In line with many of his Surrealist colleagues and friends, such as André Breton and Max Ernst, Donati built an exceptionally eclectic collection of art and artefacts from across the globe.

One of Matisse’s final works on canvas, Vase d’anémones was acquired by Donati circa 1953 and has never previously been at auction. Resplendent with bold colours and passion, it is a stunning example of his last flourishing as a painter – before he traded the brush and easel for a pair of scissors – whilst at the same time echoing the arrangements of collage elements that marked his late oeuvre. This work hung on the wall of his studio at Villa Le Rêve in the Provençal town of Vence, amongst the lively flowers that were always in abundance, and reflects the sheer joy with which he depicted his immediate environment.

René Magritte, La magie noire , 1946, oil on canvas (est. £2,500,000-3,500,000 / $3,187,500-4,462,500)
La magie noire stands as one of the most elegant examples of the theme that preoccupied Magritte in the 1940s, that of a female nude in an unidentified landscape. Here, the artist transforms his wife Georgette Berger into a modern-day Venus. Depicting her image in a classical manner, abiding by the laws of conventional beauty and proportion, she resembles a marble sculpture or mythical figure as much as a live model. This traditional representation is juxtaposed with the unexpected colouration of the figure, as her upper body gradually acquires the tone of the sky behind.
The painting’s first owner was the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, a successful businessman, who often supported the artist by buying his pictures, particularly in the early stages of his career.

Fritz Glarner, Relational Painting, No. 60 , 1952, oil on canvas on the artist’s original support (est. £450,000-650,000 / $573,750-828,750)
Making its auction debut is Glarner’s Relational Painting, No. 60, perfectly illustrating the singular compositional principles of painting. Born in Switzerland, the artist emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, and following Piet Mondrian’s arrival in New York in 1940, the two artists established regular contact. The horizontal-vertical grid and the use of strong primary colours combined with various shades of grey reflect the influence of Mondrian, though in contrast to the rigid dogma of Mondrian’s abstraction, Glarner introduced subtly sloping diagonal lines, creating a dynamic sense of fluidity and movement. The work will be sold to benefit the acquisitions fund of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

An exceptional group of 16 early works on paper by Alfred Kubin form the most significant collection of the artist’s works ever to come to auction, and will be offered across the Evening and Day Sales. Executed in the early years of the 20th century, they belong to his most iconic and creative period, when he explored the subconscious and the surreal. Formerly in the illustrious collection of Max Morgenstern, Kubin’s great patron and supporter, they have now been restituted from the Lenbachhaus museum in Munich to the heirs of Max and Hertha Morgenstern.

Alfred Kubin, Epidemie , circa 1900-01, pen and ink, wash and Spritztechnik on Kataster paper (est. £150,000-200,000 / $191,250-255,000)
Epidemie, executed at the turn of the twentieth century, depicts the figure of death in a spiderlike form, plaguing a secluded house in the depth of winter and exuding an atmosphere of suppression and terror. Breathtaking in its detail, the work demonstrates mastery over the medium of ink, rendered almost as charcoal, evoking the dark realms of his subconscious.

Chaïm Soutine, La Femme au col rouge , circa 1929, oil on canvas (est. £700,0001,000,000 / $895,000-1,280,000)
One of the most innovative portraitists of the early twentieth century, Soutine’s eye for raw beauty set him apart. Turning to everyday people as a source of inspiration, the artist challenged himself to capture the individual behind the type regardless of their age, social status, or his personal involvement with them – with his portraits indelibly imbued with a strong physical presence as well as a pervasive individuality.
In this work, which is set to make its auction debut, the anonymous woman’s expressive arms are crossed with a defensive disdain for the world around her. Conveying an air of physical anguish, her narrowed gaze meets the viewer, her lips pursed yet enlivened with sumptuous flecks of lavender.

Marc Chagall, Jour et nuit , 1945, oil on canvas (est. £450,000-650,000 / $575,000-830,000)
Painted during his exile in America, Jour et nuit is Chagall’s poignant ode to love, loss and longing. In the autumn of 1944, the artist’s beloved wife Bella suddenly and tragically passed away, leaving her husband to grieve for his life-long love and muse on foreign soil, far from their native Belarus. In this sombre moonlit-scene, an illuminated cockerel presides over the composition, a frequent reminder of Chagall’s rural and folkloric upbringing. Intertwined with the bird is the discernible outline of a woman, presumably Bella. Decades after her death, she would continue to be his painted bride bearing her bouquet. On the right, a disembodied figure – who can be interpreted as the artist himself – hovers before an easel and a blank canvas, an isolated counterpart to the ghostly Bella.