Caspar David Friedrich, The beach at Wieck near Greifswald (around 1815-21)

Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries, Sotheby’s, New York, 5 February

Estimate: $250,000 to $350,000

This sketch, from the collection of a noble European family, likely depicts the beach in Wieck, Germany, overlooking the Greifswalder Bodden. An inscription indicates that Caspar David Friedrich gifted the drawing to fellow artist A.V. Endres in 1821. Endres was a drawing master hired to teach an ancestor of the consignors, and it is believed Endres passed the work along to his pupil, after which point it remained in the family. Friedrich drawings of this significance are rare on the market and a comparable example has not appeared at auction in a decade, according to Sotheby’s. In February, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will open Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature (8 February to 11 May)—the first major US retrospective dedicated to the
German artist.

Keith Haring, Untitled, from Gran Pavese – The Flag Project (1988)

Editions & Works on Paper, Phillips, New York, 12 February

Estimate: $60,000 to $80,000

Keith Haring created this screen-printed flag for a travelling outdoor exhibition organised by the Gran Pavese Foundation in 1988. The Flag Project invited 50 artists, including Haring, to design their own interpretation of a flag, with no other themes or boundaries beyond the size or medium. After first being installed in the Netherlands on the dikes of Holland, the exhibition travelled to a variety of locations including the river borders of Frankfurt, Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the Great Wall of China. The Phillips sale will include 13 other flags from the show, by artists including Bridget Riley, Robert Longo, Hans Haacke and Kenny Scharf.

Jean Delville, L’oubli des Passions (The Forgetting of Passions) (1913)

Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection, Christie’s, London 13 February

Estimate: £120,000 to £180,000

The Belgian Symbolist Jean Delville painted L’oubli des Passions upon the completion of a five-panel commission for the Brussels Courthouse, after another of his paintings was acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg. Thanks to the financial stability from those previous projects, “the artist’s relaxed happiness is clearly reflected” in L’oubli des Passions, according to Christie’s, which describes the painting as a “contemplative approach to the earthly meeting with the ethereal”. Delville believed art should aspire to reflect lofty spiritual philosophies. The work, which has a unique fluted silvered frame by Simon Cooper, was consigned by the estate of the Australian comedian
Barry Humphries, who died in 2023.

René Portocarrero, Ciudad (1971)

Modern & Contemporary Cuban Art, Bonhams, Online, 1-11 February

Estimate: $20,000 to $30,000

The Cuban artist René Portocarrero began producing his Ciudad cityscape series in the 1950s, using vibrant colours and the imagery of his hometown of Havana to depict the climate and culture of post-revolutionary Cuba. While the series employs classic motifs of Cuban architecture such as recognisable domes and windows, his paintings are rarely literal representations of specific places in Havana, according to Bonhams.