The collection also features important sculpture, including a rare bronze portrait bust by Alberto Giacometti of his close friend and physician, Dr. Fraenkel (estimate $600/800,000). During the 1950s, Giacometti produced a series of busts which were more figural and naturalistic than his elongated figures of the post-war years. The composition is a reflection of the lonely and vulnerable human condition, a theme that very much preoccupied the artist at this time.

Conceived in 1944, Henry Moore’s Family Group represents the zenith of sustained and involved investigation by the artist into the motif of parenthood (estimate $300/500,000). During the war, Moore produced numerous works of civilians huddled in underground stations, sheltering from the bombing raids over London. These figures, clinging together for comfort and warmth, and draped in blankets, were of fundamental significance to Moore’s creative development of the family group scene and became a symbol of hope and love, of the intransience of human bonds of support, compassion and care, and of turning to the domestic and inner life in the face of immense and universal experiences of trauma.

Created while studying at the Académie Julian in Paris, La Gazelle is one of the first sculptures that Jacques Lipchitz ever conceived (estimate $100/150,000). The work’s graceful line and traditional subject matter are typical of the academic training Lipchitz would have received; at this stage the artist was more attuned to the traditional practice of sculpture than the modern and rule-breaking Cubist masterpieces he would soon create. Another bronze cast from this edition was acquired directly from the artist by the Alfred C. Barnes in 1923 and is now featured in the collection of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.