Spend some time browsing the catalogue for Sotheby's August 29th "Scottish & Sporting Pictures" auction, and you might just find yourself humming a tune from "Brigadoon," and wondering if it's not too early in the day for a neat Glenlivet.  Certainly nothing conjures Scotland like paintings entitled "The Highland Lassie," or "Cauld Blows the Wind Frae East to West."  But the 248 works of art offered in this auction are surprisingly diverse in subject matter and style.  Flora and fauna make a respectable showing in the still lifes of Anne Redpath, one of which is slyly titled Grey Still Life with Honesty (above). Perhaps "honesty" is code for "freshness of style," as her pictures of flowers in vases joyfully escape the frequent doldrums of traditional still life. Romantic landscapes abound, many aptly titled with oft-forgotten words like "gloaming" (try incorporating that into your everyday vocabulary!). Mary Queen of Scots makes a cameo appearance, while grazing cattle in soft focus and rare birds complete with brilliant plumage make quite a few.

But don't be alarmed: modernity starts to creep in about two-thirds of the way through the catalogue, and can be seen in top form in the seven paintings by Jack Vettriano that are up for sale. They were commissioned as a set by Sir Terence Conrad to decorate the walls of his Bluebird Club in London, named for the car collection of Sir Malcolm Campbell.  Campbell's Bluebirds brought him motor racing glory, and also serve as handsome subjects for Vettriano's paintings. Bluebird at Bonneville (right) is expected to bring in the largest sum of the seven, priced at £400,000-600,000. Vettriano evokes that kind of nostalgia-inducing old-world glamour we associate with "the good life" of the mid-twentieth century, with his clean lines, rich colors, dapper young men in crème-colored suits, and slightly scornful-looking femmes fatales.

As a companion to the Scottish & Sporting Pictures auction, Sotheby's is offering a "Fine Modern and Vintage Sporting Guns" auction the previous day; both are at the Gleneagles Hotel. The guns come from the collection of Sir Jackie Stewart, also a veteran of motor racing and an avid game hunter. The top lots include a pair of J. Purdey & Sons 20-bore single-trigger self-opening sidelock ejector guns (left), priced at £50,000-70,000. Those interested in pieces with some (regal) history will find a pair of similar design that were commissioned for Prince Leopold of Battenburg, and used by Lord Mountbatten (great grandson to Queen Victoria), at £35,000-50,000.  Exotic accessories are also included: a zebra skin shooting set, and an elephant skin gun slip.  Gamely pieces in more ways than one.

—EMILY CREGG

Photo by Richard Lewis/WireImage.com

Phillips de Pury & Company is an interesting, surprisingly Page Six kind of company.  Last month its chairman Simon de Pury (right) joined forces with Charles Saatchi, a partnership that will bring art for free to the masses when the Saatchi Gallery opens next year.

The firm is nearly as old as Christie's and Sotheby's, founded in 1796 by Harry Phillips, former head clerk to Christie's founder James Christie. It went through an illustrious period—handling the estates of Beau Brummel, Marie Antoinette, and Napoleon—and boasts that it is the only auction house to have held a sale in Buckingham Palace. But by the end of the 20th century, it was better known as a regional auction house whose sales were more likely to be mentioned alongside Doyle, Swann Galleries, and Bonhams than Christie's and Sotheby's.

That all changed when Francois Pinault, head of Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR), wrestled with Bernard Arnault, head of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), over Gucci in 1999, provoking a run of one-upmanship that has been compared to the rivalry between Greek shipping tycoons Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. Pinault won control of Gucci in 2001, and as of yet Arnault has been unable to trump him in the art world.

After an unsuccessful bid to acquire Sotheby's (Pinault has owned Christie's since 1998), Arnault successfully purchased Phillips in late 1999. A few months later Christie's and Sotheby's were facing price-fixing charges, and Arnault was making a ballsy attempt to upend the duopoly,  purchasing collections for auction outright and offering large guaranteed sums to win property. It was great for publicity; not so great for the bottom line.

Arnault's interest in the auction business was short-lived. He sold his majority stake in Phillips to de Pury & Luxembourg in 2002 and has since moved on to announce his own vanity museum to counter Pinault's Venice effect. Arnault had acquired the private Swiss dealership run by De Pury, past chairman of Sotheby's Europe, and his then partner, Danielle Luxembourg, former deputy chairman of Sotheby's Switzerland and Ronald Lauder confidante, in 2000.

Vanity Fair chalked up de Pury's appeal to "old-world charm and fastidiousness that borders on caricature." Apparently, when he greets women, he has a way of clicking his heels and kissing their hands—a routine that has won him many female admirers over the years." His ex-girlfriend Louise MacBain has apparently had a tough time getting over him. (He moved on to art and fashion extraordinaire Anh Duong.)

I'm not sure I see reason for heartache, but the always impeccably mannered and attired de Pury is fantastic at playing against type. Phillips, which has cornered the youth market by providing an edgy counterpoint to Christie's and Sotheby's loftiness, recently launched the interactive art site www.phillipsartexpert.com. There is something vulnerably appealing about seeing a virtual butler like de Pury inviting guests to play along in his clipped Swiss accent. Makes a girl almost want to root for him.

—KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

The "celebrity sale" is a tradition at Christie's, which can boast of having put the partial estates of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando up for auction. Christie's latest such sale offered the estate of Maria Felix, the Mexican film star of the 1940 and '50s. Though lesser known to American audiences (she never learned English), Felix was a renowned beauty and fashion icon in both Mexico and much of Western Europe.

Going into the July 17–18 auction, Christie's was confident that a global clientele of Felix fans keen to own a unique piece of celluloid history would show up in New York. The auction, after all, offered the complete contents of her Mexico City and Cuernava homes, with Christie's ground floor artfully reconstructed to afford a (lavishly decorated) homey feel.

Felix's collection included about 60 paintings, most of them portraits of herself. Antoine Tzapoff's, done in tropical colors, assaults the eye with its sheer vibrancy. Still, his Doña con Porcelana went for $38,400, a comfortable $15,000 above its mid-range estimate. The top sellers, though, were two exquisite paintings by Leonora Carrington and a charcoal drawing by Diego Rivera (right). The subject continues to be (surprise!) Maria Felix, but these works stand out for their vivid re-imaginings of Maria as heroines from myth and scripture. Carrington's triptych Sueño de Sirenas (below) features her subject as a different-colored mermaid on each panel—a sort of surrealist altarpiece to the self (complete with an ornately carved frame). At $609,600, it was the highest selling piece in the auction. Madre, Rivera's striking portrait, depicts Maria Felix as the Madonna. In the sketch her mouth is soft, but her eyes are sharp; her posture is erect, yet she cradles the child at her breast with warmth. It sold for $352,000, more than twice its low-range estimate.

The rest of the 600 lots comprised furniture, an exceptionally large collection of Jacob Petit porcelain, Christian Dior couture, and movie memorabilia, including scripts annotated by Felix. Her extensive furniture collection had an overwhelmingly rococo feel: the galleries abounded with secretaire cabinets paneled with images of Fragonard-like women gazing coquettishly alongside quaint pastoral scenes. These made one wonder whether such ornately embellished pieces would have a place in the modern home (though one such secrétaire sold for $307,200). Of course, imagining Ms. Felix at ease, or at least in portrait-ready repose, in her robustly decorated mansion was considerably less challenging.

—Emily Cregg