Portrait of Comtesse Julie Hugo was painted by François Gérard around‌ 1815-20‌. Its subject was herself an artist, having trained under Gérard and Jacques-Louis David. She was also the sister-in-law of the novelist Victor Hugo, being married to his brother Abel. She is shown in a puff-sleeved velvet gown, with fashionably centre-parted hair à la grecque

Estimate: $15,000-25,000

21‌ May‌, New York

Diego Giacometti’s love of nature comes to the fore in the bronze and marble ‘Cerf et Renard’ console table he designed around 1972. It was made for the American writer James Lord, biographer of Diego’s illustrious brother, Alberto. A stag and a fox, with a tree between them, appear in an imagined forest scene in which every upright and horizontal seems to bristle with life

Estimate: €2,000,000-3,000,000

21‌ May‌, Paris

The fiery Swedish playwright August Strindberg was also a painter. His 1892 work Ljudbojen (Sounding Buoy) is one of many studies he made of the sea and sky while staying on the island of Dalarö following his divorce from his wife Siri. The stormy scenes he depicted may reflect his troubled state of mind at a time when he found himself unable to write

Estimate: $25,000-35,000

20‌ May‌, New York