Sotheby's Offers Works from an Eclectic Collection

LONDON—Ten works from the thousand-piece collection of Gustav Rau, the late doctor and art collector with memorably idiosyncratic taste, will be auctioned off at Sotheby's London on July 9, the New York Times reports. The works are expected to bring in $4.2 to $6.5 million.

Rau, who died in January 2002, gave 700 works from his collection to the German branch of UNICEF in 2001. He stipulated that one specific group of works in the gift could not be sold for 25 years, but the rest could be sold to finance medical care as needed. The remaining 300 works in his collection were left to his estate.

His estate is now selling the 10 pieces, all by Old Masters, to cover the cost of running the hospital that Rau founded in Africa, as well as some other expenses. A painting by Pierre Patel the Elder titled A Landscape at Evening With Travelers and a Hunter Near Classical Ruins (c. 1640) is expected to bring in $788,000 to $1.1 million.

"He was a bearlike man who, once he started bidding, didn't stop," said Alexander Bell, head of Sotheby's Old Master painting department in London. "This is part of a huge collection whose fate has not yet been decided."

The works are on view at Sotheby's New York from May 2 through May 6 and then again from May 31 through June 4.