Morning:
12°c
Picasso's two musketeers: One for almost £7m and all for £15m
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent18.06.09
Two paintings by Pablo Picasso created on successive days will be sold by rival auction houses for a total upper estimate of £15million this month.
Christie's is selling Homme à l'épée, painted on 26 July 1969, with an estimate of £5million to £7million, four years after it went for £2.7million.
And Sotheby's sale of Impressionist and modern art includes Picasso's museum-quality work of the same title painted a day earlier.
It has a slightly higher suggested price tag of £6million to £8million and has never been sold at auction.
It was chosen to be on the poster for Picasso's exhibition of late works in Avignon in 1979.
They depict a striking and monumental musketeer or gaudily dressed nobleman, a subject regarded as one of the most important in Picasso's late work and an image used by his Old Master influences, Rembrandt and Velázquez.
Despite the credit crunch, the big name works available suggest there are still people with money to invest.
Christie's Impressionist and modern sale includes work by Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse and René Magritte as well as Au Parc Monceau, a Monet expected to make up to £4.5million.
Sotheby's sale also includes a Monet, Giacometti, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Giovanna Bertazzoni of Christie's London said: "Collectors continue to show a great appetite for important works of art that are in good condition, fresh to the market and which are priced at the right level."
She was confident the Picasso works would sell for their estimates.
"Both the Picassos are very desirable, big in size and impressive with a flashy palette. There has been a real trend in the last four years to recognition, both by the market and by institutions, of the importance of late Picasso," she said.
Sotheby's contemporary sale includes two works to benefit Greenhouse, the charity for young people in deprived areas which the Evening Standard supported in its Christmas appeal.
Michael Craig-Martin's Kids has an estimate of up to £20,000 and a Julian Opie portrait, Kiera, is expected to make up to £35,000.
All the works are on show. Christie's Impressionist sale is on Tuesday with Sotheby's a day later.
The Greenhouse works will be auctioned on 26 June.
