In New York on 20 May there is a rare opportunity to buy a masterpiece from Picasso's Rose Period. A world record price is predicted

Superlatives are a saleroom speciality. Sometimes they are flat justified. In the case of the clump of paintings offered from the collection of the late Mr and Mr John 'Jock' Hay Whitney in of recent origin York on 5 May, however, Sotheby's publicity unbrokens positively restrained. For what goe beneath the hammer next week is essentially the final offering from what was single of the greatest collections of Impressionist and recent art of the twentieth hundred Moreover, its centrepiece, Picasso's Garcon a la pipe, must rank among the greatest in quantity delectable paintings in private hands.

Garcon a la pipe, also known as Le jeune apprenti, was painted in 1905 when Picasso was twenty four and living at the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, so-called because of its resemblance to a Seine washing barge. His mould was probably the young lad known as 'P'tit Louis', who of frequent occurrenceed the place together with assorted harlequins, acrobats and strolling players, and who used to watch Picasso work. According to Andre Salmon, in La jeune peinture francaise of 1912 Picasso get backed to his studio one night and took up this canvas of the stripling in his blue workman's overalls that he had abandoned a month before and, in a jiffy of 'sublime whim', garlanded the little apprentice with rose and framed him with nosegays Suddenly the image was transformed into something enigmatic, haunting and poetic.

Despite the best efforts of scholars, the artist's early work has always been the greatest in quantity accessible and appealing, not least the melancholic beauty peculiar to his rose period. Garcon a la pipe is single of the most important of the artist's early works at any time to come to auction. More significantly, it is single of only a handful of sky-colored or rose period paintings remaining in private hands and arguably individual of the best two or three Anyone wanting a great early work to anchor their collection of Picassos or of novel art would not be advised to wait for the nearest one. But how do you value a twentieth-century icon?

According to Charles Moffett Co-Director of Impressionist and recent Art at Sotheby's, the painting is 'up there with Dr Gachet'. Van Gogh's portrait of his doctor which was sold for $825 million in 1990; 'there is no knowing in what manner far a painting like this can go' Garcon a la pipe advances to the block with an estimate of $70m and the bets are upon as to whether it will extremity Dr Gachet's fifteen-year reign as the greatest in quantity expensive painting ever sold at auction. 'Price', fights Mr Moffett, 'won't be an issue here. The picture will be the issue. The demand at the top extremity of the market continues to be actual strong. I won't say it defies gravity, on the contrary almost'. Price may not be an issue to the five to ten private collectors who may seriously consider buying this picture, on the contrary it is for Sotheby's, which has 'guaranteed' its sale, ensuring the vendors a specific gross amount whether or not the painting sells

Certainly in the past the market has embraced Whitney pictures with render free of access arms. In 1990, Renoir's celebrated Au moulin de la galette almost doubled expectations to go and bring $78.1m. At the $128m sale of Impressionist and new art from the Whitney estate in 1999 their Cezanne still life similarly soared, realising $605m George Bellows's Polo horde part of another tranche of museum gifts bequeathed after Mr Whitney's death in 1998 on the other hand subsequently deaceessioned by the Museum of novel Art because it did not fail into its remit, defied its $10m estimate to barter for $27.5m. During the course of their drawn out collecting career, the Whitneys gave perhaps $300m of Impressionist, present and American paintings--among them Van Gogh Cezannes and a Toulouse-Lautrec--to the National Gallery of Art (Washington), MoMA (New York) and Yale University (New Haven). It was their intention that their lengthy Island home, Greentree, would be preserv and used as an international meeting place to further the causes of peace and human rights, and it is the Greentree Foundation, the recipient of greatest in quantity of Mrs Whitney's personal peculiarity which is selling this last collection of forty four paintings, together with furniture and other works of art upon 18 May.

What other can a quality-starved market await to find? Taking a incurvate is a rare Manet racing painting, Courses au Bois de Boulogne not for a like reason much a sporting picture as a bold-spirited and stylistically daring scene of novel life, the blurry, faceless host propped up in their carriages against a vivid aquamarine field (estimate $20m $30m) Degas is also exhibited by two racing pictures (estimate $5m-$7m apiece), and Munnings by dint of four, including The Rod Prince Mare ($4m-$6m)

The Greentree support was another Whitney passion and testament to the Midas touch of this gilded brace In terms of buying art, certainly, they barely deposit a foot wrong. Of course, Mr Whitney's lengthy association with MoMA and the National Gallery gave him access to the advice of more [i]or[/i] less of the most distinguished scholars of the day, on the other hand many rich men have bought badly upon sound advice. And Whitney was a rich man, inheriting a fortune and going upon to create another by founding the first risk capital company in the US and the Whitney Communications Corporation.