The rather ho-hum grouping of Impressionist and Modern works on view at Sotheby’s New York through tomorrow will go to auction in London on February 7. The lopsidedly priced lot (some of the worst pictures have the highest estimates) is “the highest value winter sale series ever staged by Sotheby’s in London.” In other words, the sale boasts big names whose works demand top dollar.

Several mediocre works by mediocre artists – Magritte, Munch, Schiele, Gauguin, Boudin, van Dongen – are grossly overpriced. Most of the pictures by the great artists – Picasso, Chagall, Miro, Vlaminck, Redon, Monet, and Renoir – are not among those artists’ best works.

The hallmark of the bunch is Paul Gauguin’s “Deux femmes” or “La Chevelure fleurie” (1902), estimated at $18 million to $25 million. The vertical painting depicts two golden Tahitian women pressed awkwardly against one another in an interior while a stiff, orange dog that resembles a ceramic doorstop peers in through the doorway. The cramped, almost suffocated picture never quite melds spatially or coloristically, and is not Gauguin at his best.Yet, since few Gauguin paintings come to market, it undoubtedly will ride on name, subject, and rarity alone.

The same could be said of works by the minor Expressionist talents Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Ten overpriced works on paper by Schiele, mostly of women floating alone on the empty page, are each estimated to bring anywhere from $430,000 to $1.7 million. Munch is represented by eight rather slipshod, at times seemingly unfinished paintings from the Thomas Olsen collection. Though each will be sold separately, together they are estimated to bring between $14 million and $20 million.The sale of Munch’s works will only be accelerated, I imagine, by the in creasing hype over the upcoming Munch retrospective at MoMA, melodramatically subtitled “The Modern Life of the Soul,” that will open just after the auction.

Also up for sale is a Monet waterscape, “Waterloo Bridge” (1899-1901), estimated at $4.3 million to $6 million, which, though shimmering and lovely in places, especially in its drawing of sails, never quite coalesces; and a number of individual pages from a small Picasso sketchbook, as well as two late Picasso oils. Picasso’s large self-portrait “Homme a la pipe” (1968), estimated at $4.8 million to $6.5 million, is immediately striking, yet, muddled in its midsection, never adds up. But his small, strange “Le Peintre et le modele” (1965), in whites, grays, reds, and blues – estimated at $430,000 to $600,000 – is probably one of the lot’s great bargains.

The best works in the sale,judging by what was on view at the preview, are Odilon Redon’s rough yet silken oil painting “Bouquet de fleurs” (1903-05) – in which the flowers are aloft and the vase is pulled upward like the basket beneath an air balloon – estimated at $450,000 to $625,000; and Marc Chagall’s “Les Fleurs sur Saint Jeannet” (1968-72), estimated at $1 million to $1.4 million – a lush, delicately quivering painting,in deep greens, blues, reds, and violets, of a tree-size bouquet that shelters Saint Jeannet in the landscape.

Though beautiful, neither the Chagall nor the Redon is a work I would choose to take to a desert island. Given the chance, however, I would trade the whole lot of Schieles and Munchs for either painting.

Until January 13 (1334 York Avenue at 72nd Street, 212-606-7000).