Rembrandt Harmenszoon van RijnLet The Little Children Come Unto MeEstimate: £8–12m
Let The Little Children Come Unto Me - a rare and fascinating early history painting, executed by the young Rembrandt when he was in his early twenties, which provides an unparalleled insight into the practices and preoccupations that were to define his celebrated career. A highly ambitious ‘history’ painting, inspired by the biblical story in which Christ blesses children just as he blesses adults, the work is nonetheless particularly personal, bringing together not only a lively self-portrait of the young artist, but also depictions of familiar figures identified as his mother and father and other figures drawn from his close family circle who appear singly in other works. In no other image does Rembrandt bring his family together so completely. (See key below.) At the same time, recent restoration of the painting – involving the removal of confusing later additions to the original, unfinished image - has thrown crisp light onto Rembrandt’s working practice. For reasons we may never know, having worked up the figures and architectural elements in the upper part of the composition in great detail, Rembrandt ultimately left the foreground of the painting unfinished, offering an unusually transparent record of the artist’s method - particularly when it came to history paintings - of working from the back of a canvas towards the foreground.
Hans Memling The Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child Estimate: £3-4m
This roundel, small enough to be held in one hand, depicts an extraordinary moment of intimacy and maternal tenderness. Datable to 1485–90, it offers a porthole into the world of late fifteenth-century Bruges, its private devotional practices, associated art market, and - most significantly - the skill and artistic enterprise of Hans Memling, the leading painter in the city at the time. Works of this quality and age, well over five hundred years old, appear exceedingly rarely on the open market. A mere handful of paintings attributed to Memling’s workshop, and even fewer considered to be fully autograph, have been sold over the last half century. It is one of the last and finest devotional works by Memling to remain in private ownership.
Sir Edwin Landseer Scene in Braemar Estimate: £3-4m
Monumental in scale and charged with the drama of the Scottish Highlands, Sir Edwin Landseer’s Scene in Braemar is the culmination of the artist's lifelong fascination with the Highland stag. The nearly nine-foot canvas has long been understood as a darker and more mysterious sister painting to The Monarch of the Glen - Landseer’s iconic image of the Highland stag, and one of the most recognisable symbols of British art. Widely admired as among “the best works of the artist” when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857, Scene in Braemar has remained one of the most celebrated compositions by Landseer, often dubbed the “King of animal painters”. The painting distills everything he loved about the untamed beauty of the Highlands. Unseen in public for over two decades, the painting represents the culmination of an idea that had occupied Landseer for more than thirty years.
Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Sandro Botticelli, and Associate The Virgin and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist Estimate: £2-3m
This beautiful panel, never before seen in public, is one of only two known versions of The Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist, sometimes known as the Madonna del Roseto ("Madonna of the Rose Garden") - long counted among Botticelli's most famous early compositions. For more than a century, the prime original has been understood to be the slightly larger panel in the Musée du Louvre, painted around 1468–69. But new technical research suggests that the present work is far more than a later echo: it may in fact have been created alongside the Louvre painting, in Botticelli's own studio, at the very same moment. First recorded as a Botticelli in the mid-nineteenth century, when it hung in the Livorno collection of Francesco de Larderel, Count of Montecerboli, the painting remained virtually unknown until 1946, when it was rediscovered by the great Italian art historian Roberto Longhi, who hailed it as "a very important addition to the early work of Botticelli". Though later scholarship quietly reassigned the panel to Botticelli's workshop, recent examination has revealed a fascinatingly intimate relationship between the two paintings, and significant changes made during the earliest stages of this work point to Botticelli's own hand shaping the composition as it evolved, offering a rare window onto the young artist at work and the close-knit world of the assistants and associates who painted alongside him in late 1460s Florence.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger Village scene with peasants carousing and dancing around a maypole Estimate: £2.5 - 3.5 million
Populated with a rich cast of characters and depicting one of the most popular feast days in the medieval calendar, the feast day of Saint George. Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Maypole Dance, dating from the 1620s, is one of the best examples of Brueghel's independent compositions - and when last sold, nearly 30 years ago, set an auction record for the artist. While best known for replicating the now-lost inventions of his father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Brueghel the Younger here demonstrates striking originality, developing a dynamic composition that both honours and extends the family tradition, while its vivid colour and observational wit - though partly indebted to his father’s compositional devices - are distinctly his own. Exceptionally well preserved, the panel may be considered the prime version of this composition, of which only a small group of fully autograph examples - no more than seven or nine - are known to survive. The painting stands as a work of considerable importance within Brueghel’s oeuvre, embodying both his inheritance and his individuality within the great dynasty of Netherlandish painting.
Bernard Van Orley Virgin and Child Estimate: £1.5 - 2 million
This exquisite and highly refined panel (c.1518) by Bernard van Orley, one of the most important painters and tapestry designers active in Brussels and Antwerp in the first half of the 16th century, is executed in the same year that Van Orley was engaged by Margaret of Austria, Regent of The Netherlands. The walls of her Royal Palace of Coudenberg in Brussels, which no longer stand, are seen through the open window. Beyond can be seen the Church of Sainte Gudule, very much as it appears today. The painting reflects the rarefied culture of her court. Though he never travelled to Italy, Van Orley emerges here as one of the earliest and most accomplished interpreters of Italian Renaissance ideals in Northern Europe. Conceived on an intimate scale as a portable aid to private devotion, the work rewards close inspection with its wealth of detail, from the beautifully rendered and legible prayer book to the rich furnishings that would have resonated with an elite, courtly audience.
Paulus Pietersz. Potter Landscape with Animals and a Woman Milking a Cow Estimate: £2 - 3m
Coming to the market for the first time in almost 140 years, this work was painted just one year after Paulus Potter’s most famous composition, the monumental The Young Bull, which recently returned to view at the Mauritshuis in The Hague following conservation. Created during the brief yet accomplished decade of the artist’s career, the picture exemplifies Potter’s distinctive vision of the Dutch countryside. Set at the hour of melkuur, when cattle are brought in for milking, the scene unfolds in the warm light of a summer afternoon, with low viewpoints and gently rising ground. Animated by resting livestock, a watchful cow, and the milkmaid in her vivid red coat anchoring the composition.
