LONDON.- A collection of four works by leading luminaries of Impressionist and Modern art will be offered this March at Sotheby’s London. Spanning half a century of artistic innovation, with each work hugely significant in its own right, the group charts the evolution of modernism through some of its most celebrated figures – from a rare, sun-drenched Italian Riviera garden by Claude Monet, formerly in the collection of John Singer Sargent, and Paul Signac’s radiant Marseille harbour, long cherished within the artist’s family, to Fernand Léger’s dynamic machine- age vision of the modern city, closely related to a key work now in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and Edgar Degas’s incisive view of the ballet backstage. With a combined estimate of £17-24 million, the paintings will be offered in Sotheby’s Modern C Contemporary Evening Auction on 4 March.

“As the art world marks 100 years since Monet’s death – a milestone being honoured with major exhibitions from Japan’s Artizon Museum to an upcoming show in Giverny – it could not be more fitting to open the year with this tightly curated group of museum‑quality works. At its heart is Monet’s radiant Italian landscape, presented at a moment of renewed global focus on his enduring influence. Alongside a ravishing Signac oil of one of the artist’s beloved subjects in France and significant works by Léger and Degas, the collection showcases the exceptional provenance, rarity and art‑historical resonance that collectors continue to seek. Their appearance together this March offers an outstanding opportunity to acquire masterpieces that chart an illuminating arc through the development of early modernism.” -- Helena Newman, Chairman of Sotheby's Europe and Chairman of Impressionist G Modern Art Worldwide

Claude Monet, Maison de jardinier, oil on canvas, 1884 Estimate: £6.5-8.5 million

Maison de jardinier captures one of the most transformative moments of Monet’s career, painted during his ten-week sojourn on the Italian Riviera in early 1884. Although widely travelled, Monet encountered in Bordighera a landscape unlike any he had previously painted, defined by an intense Mediterranean light and a luxuriant, unfamiliar vegetation that posed a formidable artistic challenge. Approaching the region not as a respite but as a sustained problem to be resolved through painting, Monet worked with remarkable intensity, often painting all day and breaking only briefly for lunch. Fascinated by the novel combination of light and exotic plant life, he focused on a limited number of motifs, returning repeatedly to them from subtly varied viewpoints. This work, depicting the celebrated garden of Francesco Moreno, belongs to a small and significant group executed during this brief Italian break. Paintings from these ten weeks are now notably rare on the market, with many of the finest examples held in major museum collections including the Musée d’Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Equally compelling is the painting’s distinguished provenance, which situates it at the heart of the transatlantic history of Impressionism. Acquired in 1891 by John Singer Sargent, a close friend and early advocate of Monet’s work, the painting later passed through several distinguished American collections, among them that of Sarah Choate Sears. Aided by the advice of Mary Cassatt, Sears began to shape a remarkable ensemble of early Impressionist works, acquiring paintings by Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet and their contemporaries. Her travels across Europe with Cassatt and Gertrude Stein drew her ever deeper into the artistic world, where she moved with ease among painters, musicians, and writers.

Paul Signac, Marseille, le port, oil on canvas, 1G34 Estimate: £4-6 million

Paul Signac’s Marseille, le port comes to auction at a moment of renewed institutional attention for the Neo-Impressionist movement, following the recent exhibition at the National Gallery in London and anticipating the forthcoming show at the Courtauld Institute of Art devoted to its figurehead, Georges Seurat. The painting boasts a distinguished provenance: it remained in the artist’s family for many years after its creation, passing from Signac’s daughter, Ginette Signac, who gifted the work to Henri Cachin in 1968.

In the final decades of his life, Signac returned repeatedly to the ports of France, finding in them a perfect synthesis of his two lifelong passions: painting and the sea. An avid sailor, he took great pleasure in the shifting interplay of boats, light and human activity that enlivened coastal cities from Saint-Tropez to Venice and even as far afield as Constantinople. This maritime focus gained new momentum in 1929, when Gaston Lévy – a French entrepreneur and close friend – invited Signac to produce a substantial series of watercolours devoted to the nation’s harbours. Over the following three years, Signac travelled extensively, building a remarkable body of shoreline views, seascapes and studies of port life. Even after completing Lévy’s commission in 1932, he continued to journey across France in search of new material. By 1934 – the year he painted Marseille, le port – Signac had divided his time between Paris and the northern coast before making his way south in September for what would be his final visit to Marseille.

Although Signac often drew inspiration from earlier artistic traditions, he remained among the most forward-thinking painters of his generation. Marseille, le port represents a radiant culmination of his sustained investigation into colour, structure and the expressive possibilities of Neo-Impressionism. Until his death in 1935, Signac was regarded as a central figure in the movement, unwavering in his commitment to its principles. His luminous chromatic vision resonated deeply with twentieth- century artists, influencing Matisse, Bonnard, Kandinsky and Kupka.

Edgar Degas, Scène de ballet, oil on canvas, circa 1885 Estimate: £2.5-3.5 million

Degas’s lifelong preoccupation with the ballet extended to every corner of its world, from the polished stage appearance to the quiet routines behind the curtain. Dance provided him with an inexhaustible arena for artistic exploration, where he could continually shift the positions of his figures and rethink the surrounding mise‑en‑scène. Across more than fifteen hundred works in multiple media, he charted the full arc of the dancer’s experience – from practice sessions to the height of performance. Scène de ballet brings together several distinct moments of a performance into a single, unified composition.

On stage, the dancers’ costumes flare into luminous touches of colour that merge with the blurred outlines of stage décor, creating forms that hover between representation and abstraction. At the centre of the canvas, however, the dancers’ bodies are rendered with striking accuracy. Degas applied the paint with remarkable energy, often using his thumb to manipulate the pigment – a method visible in the impressions left across the surface. The subject also enabled Degas to allude to the ballet’s wider social environment. A faint shadowed figure dressed in black stands between the two dancers at the left foreground. Although such a presence could represent a ballet master, it is more plausibly a backstage admirer – an archetype familiar in Degas’s depictions of the Paris Opéra.

In Scène de ballet, Degas – fittingly referred to as “the painter of dancers” by his contemporaries – weaves together the activities unfolding both onstage and in the wings. Showcasing his brilliance as a bold colourist and as an acute chronicler of modern life, the work conveys with remarkable sensitivity the vibrant world of the Parisian ballet.

Fernand Léger, Les Hommes dans la ville, oil on canvas, 1G1G Estimate: £4-6 million

Les Hommes dans la ville is a powerful statement of Fernand Léger’s post-First World War engagement with modern urban life and the aesthetics of industrial reconstruction. Closely related to the larger version now in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the work belongs to a group of compositions through which Léger articulated his belief in art’s moral responsibility to embrace usefulness and participate in the rebuilding of society. He returned repeatedly to this subject, producing multiple versions in different formats, underscoring its importance within his post-war oeuvre.

Constructed from decontextualised mechanical elements such as pipes, valves and metal cogs, interwoven with bands of unmodulated primary colour, spheres and fragments of modern architecture, the composition exemplifies Léger’s shift from Cubist deconstruction to a process of assembly. Depth and modelling are suppressed, tightening the surface into a layered, rhythmic field in which forms tilt and fan outward before being drawn back into balance, generating an energetic, almost jazzy pulse and a bold expression of the mechanical confidence of post-war Paris.