NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announces the fall sale of 19th Century European Art on October 27. This carefully curated auction boasts a superb selection of Barbizon paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Jean-François Millet; a major discovery by Anders Zorn; French Academic artists including William Adolphe Bouguereau and Léon Jean Basile Perrault, as well as a strong collection of Spanish Impressionism, Victorian, and Maritime pieces. The sale is mostly sourced from private collections, with additions from the Art Institute of Chicago and a California Institution.

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), L'Horizon (La Plaine). Pastel and crayon noir over pencil on paper laid down on board. Estimate: $400,000 - 600,000
L’Horizon (or La Plaine) was drawn by Jean-François Millet around 1868 as part of a suite of nearly one hundred pastels and drawings commissioned in 1865 by the architect and collector Émile Gavet. It is a celebration of the vast, imposing plain and of the startling beauty of the late day skies and sunsets that dominated Millet’s interests in the final decade of his life. The challenge of capturing the vast dome of sky and the striking effect of the last rays of sun breaking through the dimming atmosphere was what truly held Millet’s interest in this intricately balanced pastel. The controlled coloring and over a nuanced architecture of black crayon, captures an hour and a season with great precision; yet a mood of mysticism pervading the composition recalls Millet’s oft-quoted homily: that in his art he believed the trivial must always serve the sublime.

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877), Paysage près d’Ornans. Oil on canvas. Estimate: $400,000 - 600,000
Courbet’s perspective on landscape painting connected the ideas of home and land. He was inspired by the area of his birth, the Franche-Comté region near Ornans, and believed that “to paint a landscape, you have to know it.” He rejected convention to explore new facets of areas he knew, giving this composition a unique down-to-earth feel.

After the painting was acquired by the original owner in 1913, it was confiscated by the National Socialists and returned to the Museum of Warsaw by the US Army in 1946. In 2011 the painting was restituted to the original owner’s heirs.

Anders Zorn (Swedish, 1860-1920), The Cigarette Girl. Oil on canvas. Estimate: $200,000-300,000
Acquired in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, this work has remained within the same family ever since and benefits from exceptional provenance. Hailed by an art critic as ‘representing Zorn at his best,’ this highly desirable painting is being offered at auction for the very first time. The appearance on the market of such a significant oil by Zorn, owned initially by a patron of the arts and friend of the artist, provides collectors with a rare opportunity to acquire a superlative example of the artist’s oeuvre.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875), Liseuse interrompant sa lecture. Oil on canvas. Painted circa 1850-1860. Estimate: $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Once owned by painters Antoine Vollon and Léon Lhermitte, this painting is an outstanding example of the classical spirit and poetry of Corot’s finest figural paintings. Corot’s figure paintings found buyers immediately and even in today’s modern market, they have become the artist’s most sought after works.