Henri Matisse's Tete de Jeune Fille is to headline Swann Auction Galleries' March 5 Prints and Drawings auction in New York with a $300,000-500,000 estimate.
Matisse produced the work in 1950. It's one of a series of line drawings depicting faces that he produced in the later years of his life.
 Matisse executed the illustration in 1950 |
The deliberate simplicity of the work is very much part of the appeal, as he once explained: "I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labours it has cost."
Another example from the series sold for £577,250 ($863,566) at Christie's London in 2010.
Paul Klee's Nachtliche Landschaft (1937), a work in watercolour and chalk, is valued at $120,000-180,000.
Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss German painter whose mystical and surreal work remains in high demand among collectors today.
In the same year the piece was produced, 17 of his canvases were included in the Nazis' "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich.
The sale also includes pieces from Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso.
