Prestige on the Block : Art: A star-studded list of sellers jockey for position in the overheated N.Y. auction world.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s are gearing up for the height of New York’s fall auction season. They have laid in plentiful supplies of multimillion-dollar paintings, mailed catalogues far and wide, sent star artworks on the road and lined up prospective buyers. Now comes the public part: a round of auctions, on Tuesday through Nov. 15, that is expected to ring up more than $500 million in sales of contemporary, modern and Impressionist art.

Art isn’t the only thing for sale, however. Prestigious provenance is also on the block, as we see from the star-studded list of sellers. Collectors who are concerned about who has owned the art they buy should feel secure this season. Even those who want or need no validation of their own judgment are likely to be impressed by the consignors:

* Lorinda de Roulet, sister of John Whitney Payson--who sold Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” for $53.9 million two years ago--will sell Pablo Picasso’s “Au Lapin Agile” at Sotheby’s on Nov. 15. De Roulet and Payson inherited the paintings from their mother, Joan Whitney Payson, a noted collector, philanthropist and owner of the New York Mets.

Rumors abound that “Au Lapin Agile” may replace “Irises” as the world’s most expensive painting. Failing that, the Rose Period cabaret scene featuring Picasso as a harlequin may still break the artist’s record of $47.85 million set in May for “Yo Picasso.” Sotheby’s has announced no firm estimate for “Au Lapin Agile,” but a press release states that the firm anticipates “the same level of interest among collectors” as “Yo Picasso.”

* Paul Mellon, a major benefactor of the National Gallery of Art and son of museum founder Andrew W. Mellon, is pruning his personal collection to the tune of $100 million. Christie’s New York on Nov. 14 will offer about $85 million to $90 million worth of that cache--in the form of 15 Impressionist and modern works.

Prime among them are Edouard Manet’s painting “Rue Mosnier, Paris, Decorated With Flags on June 30, 1878,” valued at more than $30 million, and “The Tree, Arles,” a vivid 1888 landscape by Van Gogh, expected to bring at least $25 million. Picasso’s “Death of a Harlequin,” a Rose Period painting that Mellon bought from W. Somerset Maugham’s collection, is expected to sell for more than $20 million. Three of Edgar Degas’ wax sculptures of ballet dancers, valued at $1.5 million to $2 million apiece, are also in the Mellon sale.

* Billy Wilder, a legendary film maker and highly regarded art collector, will sell 94 modern and contemporary works at Christie’s on Nov. 13. Expected to total as much as $30 million, the Wilder collection is among the liveliest collections to come up for sale in many years. Exercising a purely personal taste that favors literary complexities and emotional punch, Wilder purchased exquisitely raunchy nudes by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, poetic boxes and collages by Joseph Cornell and delightful whimsies by Joan Miro. In the Wilder roster of works by 47 artists, Picasso’s classical 1921 pastel drawing, “Tete de Femme,” is expected to bring the sale’s top price of $5 million to $7 million.

* The late Edgar Kaufmann Jr., a Frank Lloyd Wright scholar and heir to a Pittsburgh department store fortune, is known for persuading his father to commission Wright’s masterpiece, a house called “Fallingwater,” but he was also a distinguished collector of art. Sotheby’s Nov. 15 sale of 21 Impressionist and modern works from his collection is expected to total up to $40 million.

There’s a Monet waterlily painting, valued at $7 million to $9 million, an early Mondrian, called “Facade in Tan and Grey” ($6 million to $8 million) and a sprightly Miro, “l’Oiseau au Plumage Deploye Vole Vers l’Arbre Argente “($4 million to $5 million). Another painting from the Kaufmann collection, Willem de Kooning’s 1955 “Interchange” ($4 million to $6 million) is among top offerings in Sotheby’s contemporary sale on Wednesday.

* The late Robert B. Mayer, a Chicago clothing retailer, founding member of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and supporter of the Art Institute of Chicago, amassed one of the finest private art collections in the country. Twenty contemporary pieces from the Mayer collection, for sale at Christie’s on Tuesday, include Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-strip style “Torpedo . . . Los!,” expected to bring $3 million to $4 million, and Jasper Johns’ small gray painting of numbers, “O Through 9,” valued at $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

How does such distinguished ownership figure into the auction houses’ estimates? Not at all, officials from Christie’s and Sotheby’s insist. If only to protect themselves from being overly optimistic in an overheated market, they establish estimates that they say reflect market value, based on sales of similar works.

But the two houses compete vigorously for big-name collections and promote them to the hilt. The selling of collections includes selling the collectors as people of prescience and taste.

Prestigious “single-owner” sales--auctions that include a number of works from a single collection--are fancy dress occasions with admission by ticket and reserved seats for favored clients.

These sales have color-illustrated catalogues, often containing essays about the collectors, historical notes and photographs of how the artworks were installed in the collectors’ homes. Really big sales get hard-cover catalogues. Really, really big sales of single paintings--such as “Irises” and “Au Lapin Agile”--get their own hard-cover books.

Artworks in “single-owner” sales are also sent on carefully plotted international tours that include private openings and public viewings.

Apparently the strategy works. Highly publicized “single-owner” sales often surpass, even double, their estimates. That success--coupled with the fear that the bubble will burst--persuades more collectors to sell.

With art pouring out of closets, new collectors emerging in ever larger numbers and European buying reportedly on the rise, this year promises to bring more of the same.

The strongest note of skepticism about the perpetually escalating art market has been voiced over what some observers call artificial prices, pumped up by Sotheby’s practice of loaning money to their clients for the purchase of art from Sotheby’s sales.

The most famous case is that of Australian businessman Alan Bond who reportedly borrowed about $27 million from Sotheby’s to buy “Irises” in 1987 and subsequently suffered financial setbacks. Although he has made regular payments--after renegotiating the loan--the painting is safely locked in a Sotheby’s vault, according to the auction house. To help pay off his loan, Bond has consigned “La Promenade,” an Impressionist painting by Edouard Manet valued at $10 million to $14 million, to Sotheby’s Nov. 15 sale--the same auction that features “Au Lapin Agile.”