The May sale also features an exceptional selection of works by British artists, including Dame Laura Knight, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John William Godward and John Atkinson Grimshaw.  The group is led by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Love’s Jewelled Fetter (estimate $500/700,000). A tour-de-force of 19th-century painting and among Alma-Tadema’s most striking compositions –  depicting two beautiful patrician women lounging amongst a mountainous coast studded with Roman villas –  Love’s Jewelled Fetter was painted during an extraordinary period for the artist and the same year that he presented Spring (1894, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) at the Royal Academy.

The auction also offers an extraordinary oil painting by the great English Victorian-era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw. A prime example of the artist’s trademark nocturnal cityscapes, A November Night from 1874 exhibits all the hallmarks of  Grimshaw’s  mature style and the pleasure he took in depicting a street built for the emerging middle classes of Victorian England (estimate $250/350,000).

LEADERS OF THE BARBIZON SCHOOL

Furthermore, the sale will offer a wonderful array of paintings by the leaders of the Barbizon school, including Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny and Jules Breton. The group is led by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s picturesque landscape Les bouleaux des marais de Boves (estimate $300/400,000), which last appeared at auction in 1889.