Great £43m art sale

Enough masterpieces to start a small museum are about to go on display in London.

And all of them could be yours - if you can afford to pay out £42,950,000.

That is the estimated value of this astonishing collection by some of the greatest names in 20th-century art. The canvases go on show to the public today, before being auctioned in one of the strongest sales of Impressionist, modernist and surrealist art London has seen in years.

"There are 10 or 15 paintings in this sale that are of museum-standard quality," said Helen Newman, head of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art department.

The top lot - with an upper estimate of £9 million - is by one of the masters of post-Impressionism, Paul Gauguin. The work, L'Apparition, will be seen in public for the first time since 1944, when it was bought by its current private owners. However, Gauguin's Polynesian scene is just one highlight of the Sotheby's sale next Monday.

Miss Newman said: "This is in line with our top sales and in terms of the works on offer it is of a very high quality. There are strong works from all the key movements from the first half of the 20th century."

An enormously influential work by Paul Cézanne, Sous Bois, is expected to fetch £4 million. "The composition has a very modern feel to it," said Miss Newman. "It has a pivotal influence in the development of 20th-century art." The landscape was painted in 1898 at the climax of Cézanne's career, when he inspired two of art's most significant movements, cubism and abstract art.

Another lot is a landscape by Egon Schiele that was looted by the Nazis, and was only returned to the heirs of its rightful owners this year. They have decided to sell the picture, entitled Krumauer Landschaft (Stadt und Fluss), which could fetch £7 million.

Also up for auction are two paintings by Picasso, the 1901 bullfighting scene Courses de Taureaux and the erotically charged Le Baiser from 1969 (with estimated values of £2 million and £1.8 million).

Also represented are Chagall, Henry Moore, Renoir, Sisley, Miro Klee, Derain, Bonnard - and Magritte. Complete with the surrealist's signature bowler hat, Le Pelerin is expected to fetch £3.5 million.