Masterpieces to show in Moscow before sale in London

Canvases from the Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and James Tissot, as well Pablo Picasso, Robert Falk and Alberto Giacometti, will be shown during Sotheby’s pre-auction exhibition from October 24th to 25th at the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts. The works of these artists will be sold off at the auction “Old masters and British painting” in London on December 4.

In total, 45 works of art will be shown during the exhibition, including imperial porcelain and works of contemporary painters.

The Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose large-scale exhibition was recently held at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, seeing 400 thousand visitors, are quite popular among fans of Victorian art across the world. Auction experts note substantial interest among precisely Russian collectors in art from this era: over the past three years the number of participants in such auctions has risen 30 percent.

Three pictures are presented at the Moscow exhibition. Rossetti’s painting “A Christmas Carol” is one of the artist’s early works from the series of female half-length portraits in Venetian gowns, playing musical instruments, painted in oil on wood and valued at 4-6 million pounds. William Holman Hunt’s “Tuscany Girl” was painted near Florence in the winter of 1869, with an estimated value of 3-5 million pounds. And, lastly, Tissot’s “Meeting on the Yacht”, which the artist painted in 1873, several years after arriving in London, captivated by the Thames and bustling merchant wharfs around the river. The canvas is estimated at 2-3 million pounds.

All three pictures originate from the Lord Leverhulme collection, and their aggregate value, according to expert estimates, totals 9-14 million pounds.

Based on materials from RIA Novosti and NEWSRU.com.

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