Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil will be offered at Christie’s New York on Oct. 6. Courtesy of Christie’s

Pablo Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar, one of his famous female muses, titled Femme dans au fauteuil is expected to go for an estimated $20 million to $30 million USD at Christie’s 20th century art sale on October 6th, 2020, in New York. The 1941 painting features Maar seated, dressed in a ruffled blouse and plaid blazer, with coiffed hair and a feathered hat.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, Picasso painted out of his studio on the left bank of the Seine. Many of his works centered on Maar as the subject. Picasso painted a series of portraits of his lover, featuring her in different outfits in a similar blue hue. Many of these works are housed in museums such as the Musée Picasso , Paris; Kunstmuseum Basel, and Neue Pinakothek, Munich; according to Christie’s.

This would not be the first Dora Maar portrait to sell for such high numbers at an auction. In May 2017, Femme assise, robe bleu, 1939 sold for $45 million at Christie’s New York. The painting up for auction this October, Femme dans un fauteuil was part of the 1945 landmark exhibition, Matisse-Picasso, in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

Picasso photographed in Paris during Nazi occupation.

The Picasso painting available for auction is sure to fetch an incredible price, as it’s a beautiful example of Picasso’s portraiture. “In the present Femme assise, sequestered in the cool light and pressing angles of the attic space, Dora is depicted on a grand scale as proud and unbending, an image of stately defiance, a modern Marianne,” Conor Jordan, Christie’s deputy chairman of impressionist and modern art, said in a statement.