A LATE SELF-PORTRAIT BY PICASSO
Painted in 1969, a little more than a week before his 88th birthday, Pablo Picasso’s self-portrait Tête d’homme (estimate $8/12 million) was first exhibited in a one-man show that the artist curated himself in the hallowed halls of the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. Its grand scale, sweeping Gothic arches and quatrefoil windows were ideally suited to the great scale and impact of Picasso’s paintings from the period, including the present work. In many ways Tête d’homme epitomizes Picasso’s obsession with and admiration for Vincent van Gogh, echoing several elements of that artist’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat from 1887.

AN EARLY PORTRAIT BY KLIMT
Painted in 1897-98, Gustav Klimt’s Dame im Fauteuil (Woman in Armchair) is a rare example of the artist’s early portraiture (estimate $7/9 million). The work also illustrates his affiliation with the Symbolist painters of the late-19th century. The female sitter is swathed richly in a matching red dress and hat, her narrow waist belted in a deep green. The serenity and delicate pallor of her face is echoed in the ghostly quality of the two outlined heads in the upper left of the composition.

BRAQUE’S PIANISTE
La Pianiste represents the pivotal moment in Georges Braque’s career when he synthesized his Cubist sense of space with the vibrant palette of his early Fauve years (estimate $6/8 million). Part of what is considered Braque’s first true series, and recognized as the beginning of his late period, La Pianiste is the only major example of this seminal group to remain in private hands. Other works from this series reside in the most important collections in the world: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

FEININGER’S PARISIAN DEBUT
Feininger made his debut into the world of avant-garde painting in Paris with the spectacular Fin de séance (estimate $6/8 million). The artist chose to include this impressive canvas in the annual Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911, where it hung alongside works by Matisse and Kandinsky, as well as the debut of Picasso and Braque’s revolutionary Cubist compositions. When Feininger moved to the United States in 1937 on the eve of the war, Fin de séance was one of approximately 50 works from his early oeuvre that he left in the care of an associate in Quedlinburg, Germany. It was not until 1984, nearly 30 years after his death, that the pictures were finally returned to Feininger’s heirs in the United States.

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
Works emerging from a Distinguished Private Collection include Impressionist pictures by Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Bonnard, as well as an important early sculpture by Alexander Archipenko. The group is led by Signac’s Le Pin de Bertaud (estimate $3.5/5 million), a spectacular view of Saint-Tropez painted in 1899-1900 at the crescendo of his time as leader of the Neo-Impressionists. Conceived in 1913 at the height of the Cubist movement, Blue Dancer is one of Archipenko’s greatest achievements as a sculptor (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). The compelling work demonstrates the dynamic relationship between the figure and its surrounding space with a gracefulness reminiscent of Degas’s bronze dancers.