Alongside a $20m auction of Modern and Contemporary Chinese art and a preview of highlights from the New York Important Old Master Paintings sale, the four-day event at the China World Summit Wing hotel includes three selling shows and an exhibition of choice stock from a Bond Street silver and jewellery specialist.
Following the success of two selling exhibitions of Modern Masters in Hong Kong (in 2010 and 2012), Sotheby's have broadened the scope of this Beijing event beyond the confines of Impressionist and Modern art from the 1890s to the 1960s.
This whistle-stop tour of figure painting in Western art includes "one of the greatest portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn remaining in private hands" - the late period Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo. The picture, sold by Christie's King Street on behalf of Barbara Piasecka Johnson in December 2009 for £18m (when the buyer was casino owner Steven Wynn), was last seen at TEFAF Maastricht with Otto Naumann priced at $47m.
Alongside will be a selection of 19th century furniture and works of art of the kind that has shown considerable traction in the Chinese market in recent years, as well as big rocks from the subsidiary gem dealership Sotheby's Diamonds.
A fourth exhibition is titled Antique Jewellery with Royal Provenance from S.J. Phillips Ltd. It comprises five antique jewels from Europe with royal provenance, among them a pearl and diamond pendant cluster brooch formerly belonging to Empress Eugénie of France.
