Style and Art

Auction sale price records are set to be broken when the fall auction season kicks off today.

Sotheby's starts the week with its evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art, filled with works of early Modernism, German Expressionism, and the School of Paris, and several major pieces by Picasso, Cèzanne, Modigliani, Matisse, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, and Giacometti.

Highlights of the sale include a still life by Paul Cèzanne, “Nature morte aux fruits et pot de gingembre,” one of the remaining half-dozen still in private collections (price estimated $28 million–$35 million dollars), and Claude Monet's “La Plage à Trouville,” an early Impressionist painting of a seaside promenade, once owned by Mary Cassatt, with a price estimate of $16.5 million–$20 million dollarsc.

Nonetheless, Christie's is again dominating the next two weeks; both its Impressionist-and-Modern auction on Wednesday and its postwar-and-contemporary sale a week later are larger and more impressive than those of its archrival, Sotheby’s.

Headlining the group is Gauguin's “Man With an Ax” (pictured left) (1891), a richly colored canvas painted in Tahiti. Expert's estimates say it will sell for $34 million to $45 million dollars aproximately. Although the seller identification reads “property of a lady of title”, experts say it is from a member the family of the Sultan of Brunei.