SYDNEY.- A rare painting by avant-garde Australian artist and University of Sydney philanthropist John Wardell Power is expected to break auction records next week after being unearthed in Europe after 70 years.

Basket of Fruit, c.1936, which was last exhibited in Paris in 1945, was discovered this year at a flea market in The Netherlands and will be auctioned as part of Bonhams’ Important Australian & International Art sale in Sydney on June 16.

Bonhams’ Australian art specialist Merryn Schriever said only nine Power paintings had been offered at auction in the past 20 years and Basket of Fruit was the best of them.

“The majority of Power’s works are now held by the University of Sydney, so to have a painting of this quality appear on the secondary market is very exciting,” Ms Schriever said.

The current auction record for a work by Power was set by Bonhams in 2013 for Abstract Figure, which sold to the National Gallery of Victoria for $54,900 including buyer’s premium.

Ms Schriever said Basket of Fruit was almost certainly exhibited in the artist’s 1938 solo show at Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, before being included in a wartime charity auction to assist returning ex-prisoners in 1945.

“After 1945 the painting disappeared without a trace – until now,” she said.

Power famously bequeathed £2 million (more than $40 million today), as well as his own artworks, to the University of Sydney, and provided seed funding for the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay.

The Power Bequest remains the largest bequest the University has ever received.

Basket of Fruit has a pre-sale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.