Sotheby's will offer Chinese antiquities and Impressionist portraits at this year's auction, collected by a descendant of one of Hong Kong's wealthiest families.. These are 400 works from the collection of the late businessman and philanthropist Joseph Hotung and will be split between a Hong Kong sale in October and a London sale in December.. Among the paintings is a portrait of Edgar Degas, a wedding gift to Eugene Manet and Berthe Morisot, writes The Art Newspaper.

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The said auction house will soon offer what's left of his collection, dividing it into two categories: Chinese paintings, objects and antiquities spanning two millennia (to be auctioned on October 8 and 9 in Hong Kong), and European furniture and portraits on the 17th.. - the beginning of the 20th century (they will be presented on December 7 and 8 at the sale of works by the Old Masters in London (SM - artists of Western Europe who worked before 1800 - ed..

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French impressionism and early modernism.

Centered around French impressionism and early modernism, it includes a group of Degas portraits – a notable genre for the artist as he never commissioned portraits.. The most valuable of these is his portrait of Manet's younger brother, Eugene, 1874, created as a wedding gift to the sitter and his wife, the artist Berthe Morisot.. This work is estimated at 4-6 million pounds..

The Hotung, from one of Hong Kong's richest and oldest families, took up art collecting in the early 1970s after a flight delay ended up in San Francisco.. To pass the time, he entered an antique shop and found a pair of white jade bowls.. Moved from Hong Kong to the UK in the 1990s. Despite his wealth and prolific support and patronage of artists, Joseph Hotung remained a relatively private figure throughout his life and kept his collection in his own home in London..

Recall that the other day Egyptologists called for the return of the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti: details of claims to the Louvre.