Richard Avedon, Bob Dylan, folk singer, New York (1963)

Photographs from the Richard Gere Collection, Christie’s, online, March 23-April 7

Estimate: $40,000 to $60,000

In 1963, a cherub-faced Bob Dylan portrayed a portrait of Richard Avedon. Dylan, although still in his early twenties, was just beginning to become his own – his second album, Bob Dylan coasting, was released the same year and featured songs such as Blowin’ in the Wind and Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright. Avedon, however, was already a legend thanks to his pioneering images for glossy magazines. The couple’s camaraderie and confidence, both in front of and behind the lens, is palpable here – rarely has Dylan looked so at ease when photographed. This image is one of 156 auctioned photographs from the collection of actor Richard Gere. “These photographs came into my life because I felt something for them,” says Gere. “They have a real soul, a humanity, a generosity.”

Lucian Freud, Goldie Sketch (circa 2003)

Tanya Baxter Contemporary at the London Art Fair, April 20-24

£250,000

When Lucian Freud showed up at the Wormwood Scrubs Pony Center in London to paint its equine inhabitants, the centre’s founder, Sister Mary Joy Langdon, not realizing who Freud was at the time, gave him a book on how to draw horses and ponies. The artist looked at it carefully before returning it to Langdon, saying “that’s very good”. Between 2003 and 2006, Freud painted regularly at the centre, specializing in riding and equine therapy for children with special needs, becoming an unofficial artist in residence. The second horse Freud chose to study was a Welsh cob called Goldie, and he produced this large-scale pencil sketch of the mare before deciding that her personality didn’t suit him, so he moved on to another – a magpie called Sioux who is now well known from Freud’s later paintings. Freud gave this unfinished sketch of Goldie to Langford, who sold it in 2019 at Chiswick Auctions in London to raise money for the stables, then it sold for £50,000 (with fees).

Giorgio de Chirico, Hector and Andromache (1946-47)

Artemisia Fine Art, Dogana, at MiArt, Milan, April 1-3

Around €1.2 million

This is De Chirico’s ninth painting of the subject of the Trojan prince Hector bidding farewell to his wife Andromache before heading to her death in battle with Achilles. The artist began this series in 1917 and the faceless mannequin is thought to refer to a figure in his brother Alberto Savino’s 1914 poem Les Chants de la Mi-Mort. Although this work was executed between 1946 and 1947, De Chirico signed the painting – as he did for practically all the works in this series – with an earlier date, in this case 1916. He did to link the works to a “past time”. and declare the present “immobile”, according to Paolo Baldacci, specialist in the work of the artist. Adding to the fabricated sense of age, De Chirico painted this work on an antique canvas. While De Chirico’s most valuable period tends to be from 1914 to 1930, his Hector and Andromache paintings have fetched some of his highest prices on the secondary market, with a 1923 fetching $4.8 million at Christie’s New York in 2011, its seventh-highest price at auction.

Cindy Sherman, Murder mystery, scenes 8, 10 and 11 (1976)

Photographs, Phillips, New York, April 6

Estimate: $200,000 to $300,000

These three photo collages, each called “scenes”, are from the work of Cindy Sherman. Murder Mystery series of 255 cut-out black and white silver prints. The series predates his conceptually similar and seminal series of self-portraits Stills from the untitled film (1977-80). For Murder Mystery, the artist photographed herself as a set of figures, then cut out the figures from her resulting prints, which were placed in various scenarios. She then created a narrative for these works, writing pages of script notes for each scene. The present batch consists of Scenes 8, 10 and 11. According to Sherman’s notes, they show: a director consulting an actress as they walk towards a door, behind which the press awaits; the same actress in a “quirky-obscene pose”; and the press interviewing the actress and director. The seller purchased these works from the now defunct Metro Pictures, Sherman’s longtime gallery, in 2012 at the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) fair in New York.