Five watercolors by Egon Schiele, part of a U.S. art collection, may fetch as much as 7.6 million pounds ($13.8 million) when they’re auctioned in London on June 20, said Christie’s International.

Three of the works are well known after being loaned to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, including “Moa,” a 1911 portrait of a dancer with a top estimate of 3.2 million pounds, Christie’s said in an e-mailed statement. The collection belonged to the late Frederick Gerstel, one of the first U.S. purchasers of Schiele’s work, Christie’s said.

High prices for the Austrian artist’s work are bringing sellers to the market. Christie’s will offer Schiele’s “Sonnenblumen,” a painting of wilted sunflowers, for heirs of Viennese textile manufacturer Karl Grunwald on June 20, too. The picture, now valued at as much as 6 million pounds, was stolen by the Nazis in the 1940s, and the family recovered it in February.

Posted: 05|1|06 at 8:03 am. Filed under: UK News.