René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

Painted in June 1945, René Magritte (Belgian surrealist artist, 1898-1967) himself described the scene in L'utopie in his publication, Dix tableaux de Magritte précédes de descriptions, published the following year.

There, he explained that, 'The rose is alone on an island'..

This sense of the solitude of the flower, already emphasised by the span of the distant horizon and the vastness of the ocean, is thus reinforced by Magritte's statement and his own declared intention.

How did the rose reach this island?

René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Fragments and studies

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was fascinated by hats and their infinite array of trimmings.

To quote the model-turned-painter Suzanne Valadon: "Renoir particularly loved women's hats... he never ceased buying lots of hats".

The millinery trade was a thriving industry in Paris during the second half of the 19th century.

When the vogue for hats reached its peak, Paris was home to about 1,000 milliners.

Since hats represented the most variable accessory in a wardrobe, even women with moderate means owned several.

In this kaleidoscopic sketch, Renoir lavished his attention on the hats, while the heads are no more individualized than mannequins.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Study of Heads, 1890 | Barnes Foundation

Egon Schiele | Herbstsonne, 1914

Herbstsonne (Autumn Sun) is a lost masterpiece of Schiele's art unseen since 1942 and thought, until now, to have been destroyed in the Second World War.

One of Schiele's (1890-1918) most important paintings and among the finest of all his landscapes, it is the culmination of a central theme in Schiele's work that had preoccupied him since first coming to artistic maturity in 1910.

Using landscape as an allegory of a human emotion, Herbstsonne is an 'Expressionist' landscape in the truest sense of the word and a masterpiece of the unique and precarious time in which it was made.

Egon Schiele | Herbstsonne, 1914 | Christies

René Magritte | Le Préméditation, 1943

"Before the war, my paintings expressed anxiety", René Magritte explained, "but the experiences of war have taught me that what matters in art is to express charm.

"I live in a very disagreeable world, and my work is meant as a counter-offensive".

Painted during the final months of 1943, Le Préméditation is one of the earliest in a series known as Le Surréalisme en plein soleil (Surrealism in sunshine), created by Belgian Surrealist René Magritte (1898-1967) during the turbulent years of the Second World War in the hope of re-enchanting daily life.

A radiant bouquet of springtime flowers all improbably sprouting from the same plant, Le Préméditation captures a magnificent vision of optimism and hope.

René Magritte | Premeditation, 1943 | Christie’s

Claude Monet | Deux femmes en barque, 1887

In 1883, Claude Monet (1840-1926) acquired a property in Giverny, a small village in his native Normandy.

Over the next several decades, the artist transformed the isolated, overgrown grounds that surrounded his new home into a lush private paradise, replete with overflowing flowerbeds, sweeping willow trees, wisteria vines, and an infamous waterlily pond.

This curated gardenscape would ultimately inspire some of the artist’s most infamous works in the second half of his career.

Claude Monet | Deux femmes en barque, 1887 | Christie's

Camille Pissarro at the Christie's

Camille Pissarro | Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, 1881

In Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, painted in 1881, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) depicts a group of five young women harvesting peas on the rural outskirts of Pontoise, a bustling market town about forty kilometers northwest of Paris where he and his family had lived for over a decade.

Pissarro had first treated the theme of picking peas in two oils the previous year, and he returned to the motif at least three times following his move to the agrarian hamlet of Éragny in 1884.

Camille Pissarro | Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, 1881 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille au chapeau, 1895

Portraits of children were amongst Renoir's favourite themes and feature strongly in the artist's painting of the 1890s.

Over the previous decade Renoir had been commissioned to paint the children of a number of celebrated patrons, including the Lerolles and the Berards.

These commissions gave the artist a renewed interest in portraiture in the 1890s and Renoir painted a number of non-commissioned portraits in addition to more formal requests.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille au chapeau, 1895 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Rocks of L’Estaque, 1882

This is one of a small series of radiant landscapes that the Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted during a stay with Paul Cézanne in L'Estaque, a small fishing port just west of Marseilles.

Renoir, who was travelling back to Paris having spent the previous months in Algeria and Italy, was immediately captivated by the raw light and rich beauty of the Provençal landscape.

"How beautiful it is!" he wrote to a friend, "It's certainly the most beautiful place in the world, and not yet inhabited… There are only some fishermen and the mountains…so there are no walls, no properties or few…here I have the true countryside at my doorstep".