Six international fairs and a spectacular sequence of sales confirm London's status as the capital of the art world as the June season gets under way

Apollo, June, 2004 by Susan Moore

Another turn up for the text books is Caspar David Friedrich's understated and infinitely subtle Nordic landscape, Spring, painted around 1825-30 and discovered in a Munich saleroom, filthy and with two tears, and catalogued as anonymous nineteenth century German School. At first glance, this is a desolate scene--a vast expanse of iron-hard snow and icy mountain dwarfing two tiny figures in the middle distance and all beneath a lowering steel-blue sky. A second look reveals brown earth and tufts of grass pushing through their thawing blanket, and a glimmer of new warmth in the sky--a signal of hope for those who care to see it. It is not unusual for works by the artist not to appear in the literature, and this one comes to the block with the blessing of Friedrich scholars. Despite the damage, the painting is on its original stretcher, has not been relined and is probably in its original frame. (Sotheby's, 15 June, estimate 400,000-600,000 [pounds sterling]).

Sleuthing at Bonhams has revealed the date--1916--and the name of the sitter--Christina--of the Modigliani portrait it unveils for sale on 21 June (estimate 700,000-1m [pounds sterling]). Even so, the young girl in the camisole remains a bit of a mystery, and the picture itself, which has been in the same family since 1937, was last exhibited to the public at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1960.

Asian and decorative arts also strong

More images of feminine beauty take a bow in the sale of Japanese prints from the celebrated encyclopaedic collections of the Belgians Adolphe and Suzanne Stoclet, famous also for their inspired commissioning of Josef Hoffmann to build the Palais Stoclet, 1905-11. This group of Ukiyo-e is arguably the most important single collection remaining in private hands in terms of both quantity and quality, and is expected to realise over 1m [pounds sterling] at Sotherby's on 8 June. The auction-house is also offering a magnificent and monumental Imperial water buffalo realistically carved out of mottled buff and grey jade and dated to the late Ming or early Qing dynasties. This splendid reclining beast, fourteen inches long, a rare find on the open market, was acquired by the late Somerset de Chair in 1952--a connoisseur who owned more jade buffaloes than anyone else apart from the Emperor Qianlong (9 June, estimate 300,000-500,000 [pounds sterling]). Remarkable in a different way is the gloriously vibrant collection of Chinese monochrome porcelains amassed by the late Professor Teddy Hall, the scientist who pioneered thermoluminescence testing and debunked both the fakes of Piltdown Man and the Turin Shroud (he was also intrigued by testing the often complex composition of the glazes of his porcelains). The 300 or so pieces, expected to raise over 2m [pounds sterling], come to the block at Christie's on 7 June with estimates from 300 [pounds sterling] to 30,000 [pounds sterling].

And for those who clamour for brown English furniture, Christie's present a very splendid George III marquetry commode attributed to Mayhew & Ince of around 1775. Recorded at Chesterfield House in London in 1926, and incorporating a seventeenth century Italian scagliola top and both French and English mounts, it is being sold by the descendants of the 6th Earl of Harewood and the Princess Royal on 1 July, estimate 500,000-800,000 [pounds sterling].