On October 21, 2026, Sotheby's New York will stage the first of four auctions spread across three days, offering around 600 works and objects from a single private collection of more than 900 pieces. The dispersals will continue through 2027, and the October offerings alone are expected to bring more than $60 million.

The evening sale's standout Old Master is a modestly sized but atmospherically vast canvas by Jacob van Ruisdael: 'View of Haarlem from the Northwest', painted around 1670 and measuring just 54.3 by 67.6 cm. Signed at the lower left, the oil painting belongs to the series of Haarlem panoramas the Dutch master pursued through the 1660s and early 1670s, in which the city sits on the horizon beneath an immense, ever-changing sky.

The composition looks out from the dunes northwest of Haarlem across open land toward the distant city, with towering cumulus clouds casting alternating passages of shadow and light. It should not be confused with the Mauritshuis's own 'View of Haarlem' — the New York canvas is a separate variation on the same theme, one of Ruisdael's signature vantage points that he returned to repeatedly as a study of sky, space and light.

With an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million, the Ruisdael ranks below the sale's top tickets — a Canaletto expected to fetch $6 million to $8 million and a Degas pastel estimated at $5 million to $7 million. The gaps say more about the sale's internal pricing hierarchy than about the Dutch master's stature: within an auction spanning centuries of material, the Haarlem panorama offers bidders a quiet counterpoint of open land and shifting light.