NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's announced that paintings from a distinguished private collection including works by Osias Beert, Jan Massys, Henri-Pierre Danloux, Jan van Huysum, Jan van Os and Mihály Munkácsy will be offered in London's Old Master Evening Sale on 8 December, and Old Master Paintings Part I in New York on 3 February 2027. Highlights will tour to Paris (on view until 4 November) and London (4 – 8 December), ahead of the auctions. The lead lot of the group comes to auction for the very first time in more than two centuries: Julie Le Brun as a Bather by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. This important work returned to public view as part of the landmark retrospective dedicated to Vigée Le Brun at the Grand Palais in Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2015 and 2016 (estimate: $1,800,000-2,200,000).

The subject of the painting is Jeanne-Julie-Louise Le Brun (1780–1819), called Julie, the only child of Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842), one of Europe's most celebrated portraitists in the late-18th and early-19th centuries and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun (1748–1813), the preeminent dealer, auctioneer and art expert in Paris during the final decades of the Ancien Régime. Vigée Le Brun was one of the few women artists to be elected to the Académie Royale in Paris, in 1783, and served as the official portraitist to Queen Marie Antoinette, before fleeing France at the outbreak of the French Revolution and achieving international fame across Europe. This painting was executed in 1792, when artist and daughter were living in exile in Italy. This striking image of Julie was acquired through the intermediary of Jean-Baptiste Greuze by the Russian nobleman and art collector Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov, in whose family it remained until the 20th century. It is unlined and preserved in a near-miraculous state.

Vigée Le Brun painted images of Julie throughout her childhood and adolescence, most famously in two double portraits featuring mother and daughter in a tender embrace which are among the most beloved works in the Louvre. As with earlier portraits of her daughter, Vigée drew from a rich visual tradition when crafting Julie's pose for this painting.

Also painted in 1792 whilst in exile from Revolutionary Paris, Henri-Pierre Danloux's charming double portrait of the sons of Constantia and Richard Foster, with cricket bats in a wooded landscape, launched his career in London when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793 (depicted on page one).

Further highlights include a beautifully rendered still-life by Jan van Huysum, which will tour with the Le Brun to Paris, and Mihály Munkácsy's After Dessert - Die Jungen Hunde, painted circa 1890.