Sotheby’s London has unveiled the full contents of its Old Master and 19th Century Paintings and Sculpture Evening Auction, on public view from 27 June to 1 July 2026 ahead of the sale on 1 July. The sale is rich in fresh-to-market works: sixteen of the 46 works on offer will appear at auction for the first time, nearly a third have never been exhibited publicly, and six have not been seen in public for over six decades.
The offering is led by Rembrandt’s Let The Little Children Come Unto Me (estimate: £8 million to 12 million), a rare early history painting executed when the artist was in his early twenties. Inspired by the biblical story in which Christ blesses children, it brings together a lively self-portrait of the young artist alongside figures identified as his mother, father and close family. Recent restoration, which removed later additions to the unfinished image, has revealed Rembrandt’s working method of building a composition from the back of the canvas toward the foreground.
Also offered is Hans Memling’s roundel The Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child (estimate: £3 million to 4 million), datable to 1485 to 1490 and one of the last and finest devotional works by the artist remaining in private hands. Sandro Botticelli and Associate’s The Virgin and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist (estimate: £2 million to 3 million), never before seen in public, is one of only two known versions of the Madonna del Roseto; new technical research suggests it may have been created alongside the Louvre version, in Botticelli’s own studio.
Sir Edwin Landseer’s Scene in Braemar (estimate: £3 million to 4 million), a nearly nine-foot canvas unseen in public for over two decades, is the darker sister painting to The Monarch of the Glen. Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Village scene with peasants carousing and dancing around a maypole (estimate: £2.5 million to 3.5 million), dating from the 1620s, set an auction record for the artist when last sold nearly 30 years ago. Bernard van Orley’s Virgin and Child (estimate: £1.5 million to 2 million), painted around 1518, depicts the Royal Palace of Coudenberg in Brussels through an open window.
A rare pair of views by William Hodges, View of Vaitepiha Bay, Tahiti and View of Owharre [Fare] Harbour, Huahine (estimate: £300,000 to 500,000 each), painted in 1777 after Captain Cook’s second voyage, rank among the earliest Western painted records of the South Pacific. Giovanni Antonio Guardi’s The Greek Favourite in the Harem (estimate: £200,000 to 300,000), from a series commissioned by Field Marshal Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, makes its auction debut. Further works include Ivan Aivazovsky’s moonlit view of Venice (estimate: £500,000 to 700,000) and Hendrick Goltzius’s Christ as the Living Tree with Ecclesia (estimate: £800,000 to 1.2 million).
Preceding the Evening Auction, Sotheby’s will stage a dedicated single-lot sale for the Hamilton Laocoön (estimate: £2 million to 3 million), one of only four known full-scale bronze casts of the ancient sculpture, created in Paris in 1817 and coming to market for the first time in nearly 150 years. The paintings sales will be complemented by the annual auction of Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries, headlined by a self-portrait by Sir Peter Lely and including two drawings by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, along with works by J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough and a pastel of a lion by Eugène Delacroix.
(Press Release)
