Christie’s and Sotheby’s are set for record-setting prices and headline-ready superlatives as auctions kick off Tuesday.

Both houses are expecting hefty returns on their Impressionist and Modern sales, spurred by a soaring market and the recent restitution of iconic 19th and 20th century masterpieces. With an aggregated estimate of between $340 and $490 million, Christie’s evening sale is likely to become the highest-earning auction to date, surpassing the current auction record of $286 million. That was set at Sotheby’s in May 1990, the halcyon days just before the last major crash.

The venerable rivals have packed six combined morning and evening auctions with an impressive cache of painting and sculpture, including some of the few remaining masterworks still in private hands.

The current buoyant market, with prices at an all-time high and rising, has convinced some longtime holders of major works, as well as estates with newly repatriated masterpieces, to sell at auction.

Sotheby’s starts the week with its evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art, filled with important works of early Modernism, German Expressionism, and the School of Paris, and several major pieces by Picasso, Cezanne, Modigliani, Matisse, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, and Giacometti.

The highlights of the sale are a still life by Paul Cézanne, “Nature morte aux fruits et pot de gingembre,” one of the remaining half-dozen still in private hands (est. $28 million–$35 million), and Claude Monet’s “La Plage à Trouville,” an early Impressionist painting of a seaside promenade, once owned by Mary Cassatt, with an estimate of $16.5 million–$20 million.

The touching still life of a pair of shoes byVincent van Gogh in the sale is the only such work still privately owned. Last sold at Christie’s in the late 1990s, it carries a high estimate of $12 million at Sotheby’s.

The evening sale also includes paintings by Picasso from several different periods, including a 1932 work, “Le Sauvetage,” back on the market since being on the block at Sotheby’s in 1993 for $4.4 million (now with a low estimate of $12 million). Likely a self-portrait, “Le Fumeur,” a boldly patterned painting from the early 1950s, carries a similar high estimate.

Matisse’s renowned sculpture “Figure Decorative,” a rare example of a piece cast in 1950, is estimated to sell for between $12 million and $16 million. The sale also includes outstanding sculpture by Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Arp, Lynn Chadwick, and Henry Moore.

Sotheby’s robust evening auction is followed by a much less blockbuster day sale Wednesday, split into Impressionist and post-Impressionist and Modern Art sessions. These include drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and paintings by Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Ferdinand Leger, René Magritte, Juan Gris, Odilon Redon, and EdouardVuillard.

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale Wednesday easily eclipses the Sotheby’s auction in scope and breadth. Touted as the most valuable various owners sale ever, it’s packed with an outstanding collection of masterworks, the likes of which have rarely been seen at auction in decades.

It’s easily set to become the highestearning auction ever on record.

The sale includes four storied Klimt paintings, an important Blue Period Picasso, several Egon Schiele works, and perhaps the most significant Tahitian Gauguin to be auctioned in 25 years.

The Klimt paintings are part of the five recently restituted to the heirs of Adele Bloch-Bauer by the Austrian government after a protracted seven-year lawsuit, including the $135 million Klimt currently in the Neue Galerie. That sum paid by cosmetics mogul Ronald Lauder stands as the highest price ever paid for an artwork.

All four, including the earliest work, a stunning birch forest landscape from 1903 valued at between $20 million and $30 million, are expected to realize in the excess of $90 million.

The centerpiece is the pendant to the Neue Galerie’s own golden Klimt. “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” (est. $40 million–$60 million) depicts Klimt’s lover, the daughter of a wealthy Viennese Banker, with her still, porcelainlike expression set in a background of decorative Orientalist detail — a rather more chaste depiction than the overt eroticism of the Neue Galerie’s Klimt.

To help finance the acquisition of that “sister” painting, the Neue Galerie is itself deaccessioning a painting and two watercolors by Egon Schiele through the sale, as reported by The New York Sun this week.

But the highlights of the evening sale are a Picasso portrait from 1903 consigned by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, and a unique Gauguin, one of the first the artist painted on his arrival in Tahiti.

Picasso’s “Portrait de Angel Fernández de Soto” captures the bohemian dandy, whom Picasso described as “an amusing wastrel,” smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of absinthe. Part of a trio of paintings of his closest friends in the artist’s renowned monochrome cyan style, the painting is expected to raise between $40 million and $60 million for Sir Lloyd Webber’s charitable foundation. Last spring’s blockbuster Picasso, “Dora Maar With Cat,” sold for $95.2 million at Sotheby’s.

Paul Gauguin’s “L’homme à la hache,” depicts a tropical beach scene of a male woodcutter and a woman stowing nets in a canoe. Mentioned in the artist’s classic journal of his first sojourn to Tahiti, “Noa Noa,” this signal painting from the period, with its flat perspective and fluid arabesques, was once owned by the leading French dealer Ambroise Vollard and has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. An outstanding example of the artist’s work, it carries an estimate of $35 million–$45 million.

A Balthus painting of three sisters that’s been the property of its present owner since it was painted is also on the block (est. $7 million–$10 million). Other notable lots include a recently restituted Ernst Ludwig Kirchner street scene (est. $18 million–$25 million); a key work by Ferdinand Leger from 1922 ($7 million–$10 million); a Bonnard still-life ($5 million–$7 million); and a pointillist Pissarro being sold by the family that’s owned it since 1892 ($2 million–$3 million).

Like Sotheby’s, which is auctioning “Le Fils Du Concierge” (est. $14 million–$18 million),Christie’s is also offering a prized Modigliani,”Venus (Nu debout, nu medicis),” a bashful nude with an estimate of $6 million–$9 million.

Christie’s day sale is a more subdued event, but includes some significant works from the collection of a New York philanthropist, Janice Levin, including a Renoir painting of a small fishing village (est. $1.2 million–$1.6 million) and a Berthe Morisot reclining female portrait with a high estimate of $1.5 million.

Rounding out the impressive run of auctions is Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper sale, featuring works by Gauguin, Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Renoir, and several drawings by Paul Klee.

In the meantime, New Yorkers can view many of these works at the auction houses’ public previews. The Sotheby’s pieces can be viewed until Tuesday, while the work at Christie’s will be on exhibit until Wednesday (see Sothebys.com and Christies.com for specific times). It’s a brief chance to view many of these works before they disappear back into private hands for years, or even decades.