Leading the group is La Coiffure (The Toilete by Degas (estimate: $5.000.000 – 7.000.000). This exceptional pastel refers directly to the artist's important oil painting of the same title, which was owned by Henri Matisse and later of his son, who sold it to National Gallery in London.
Degas executed both the painting and this specimen between 1892-1895, the period which marked the emergence of the final phase of his work. Within this period, some of Degas's best pictorial inventions center on the subject of a woman having her hair combed or brushed, a practice that is as much about the banality of daily ritual as it is about formal presentation and glamour. Stylistically, Degas' work at this time is characterized by a wonderfully intense use of brilliant colour, with figures distilled to their essence. This example has been exhibited at top institutions globally, including the National Gallery of London and the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection is also highlighted by Young Girl in the Rose by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1886 (Estimate: $3.000.000 – 5.000.000).
Executed during the height of the Impressionist master's career, this ambitious pastel is executed on the scale of a life-size oil painting and appears on the cover of John Rewald's 1946 volume, Renoir's Drawings. A young woman holding a rose wearing a white blouse and straw hat, idealized representations of female figures in Renoir's pastel studies. Here, her conservative yet fashionable demeanor coupled with her perfect posture lend the young woman an air of decorum, and her thoughtful expression conveys a unique sense of specificity that Renoir typically reserved for portraits of her.
Other highlights include James McNeill Whistler's Whistler Smoking – the artist's first painted self-portrait and the only recorded example left in private hands – e Renoir's route to Wargemont, a vivid landscape created by the master during an 1879 summer visit to the country house of his patron and friend, Paul Bérard (estimate: $3.000.000 – 5.000.000). The picture is among the brightest and most colorful of a group of works created by Renoir with the natural beauty of Wargemont Castle, located in a port city in northern France. This work features a group of women and children walking along the street, but the artist captures them from an unexpected angle; they are dwarfed by the copious vegetation. This idyllic, jewel-toned painting was produced during Renoir's first trip to Wargemont Castle; he would return in later years and paint many more open-air scenes, including the panoramic seascape, now kept in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
