NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- A collection of 44 paintings from the Whitney collection is expected to collect $140 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York.
The paintings, including works by Picasso and Manet, will be auctioned in two sales on May 5 and 19.
The highlight of the auction is expected to be Pablo Picasso's Boy with a Pipe painted in 1905, and worth about $70 million -- Sotheby's highest pre-sale estimate, the BBC reported.
Much of the Whitney collection, long considered to be one of the finest private collections in the United States, had been loaned to museums and galleries.
The paintings are the property of the New York-based Greentree Foundation, set up in 1982 by Betsey Whitney after the death of her husband, John Hay Whitney, editor-in-chief and publisher of the New York Herald Tribune as well as chairman of the International Herald Tribune.
