Auction likely to raise Munch ado

FRED OLSEN, a Norwegian shipowner who is liquidating most of his paintings by Edvard Munch, may raise as much as $19.4 million when the works are auctioned in London on Feb. 7, according to Sotheby’s Holdings Inc.

The eight paintings form the biggest and best Munch collection put on the market since World War II, according to Philip Hook, a senior Sotheby’s director in London. Munch’s star has risen over the last decade, and the value of his works may have been raised by publicity about the theft of his “Scream” from an Oslo museum in August 2004, art experts say.

The Olsen family owns about 34 works by Munch, of which Fred Olsen, 77, has a dozen or so, Hook says. The Sotheby’s official says the paintings were split between Olsen and his brother, Peter, by their father, Thomas, a patron of the artist.

The works on the block span the career of Munch, who was born in 1863 and died in 1944. The 1904 “Summer Day” has the highest estimated value, at $6.1 million. Olsen does not own any of the four or so versions of “Scream,” Hook says.