Auction introduction: We are pleased to announce the third incarnation of our exciting and very successful new-format works on paper sale, Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries. This sale, first held in London in July 2021 and reprised in New York this past January, presents a wide range of works on paper by European artists from the early Renaissance to the early modern periods, highlighting the unique qualities shared by drawing of all periods, and the way that works on paper transport the viewer into the very heart and moment of the creative process, whenever it may have happened. The initial London sale saw the astonishing Hans Hoffmann watercolour of a Hare achieve a record price for the artist (£1,249,000, estimate £600,000–800,000) and Samuel Palmer’s Shepherd Leading His Flock under the Full Moon, from some 250 years later, also dramatically surpassed its pre-sale estimate of £700,000–900,000, selling for £1,588,000. In the second sale, in New York, the superb rediscovered study of The Head of a Young Woman, looking Down, by Fra Bartolommeo made $1,835,000 against an estimate of $400,000–600,000.