The sale of 44 paintings once owned by the Whitney family is expected to bring $140 million. It’s the highest pre-sale estimate ever – the collectioncludes work by Picasso, Manet, and major works by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Sir Alfred J. Munnings and John Singer Sargent. “The paintings are the property of the New York-based Greentree Foundation founded in 1982 by Betsey Whitney after the death of her husband, John Hay Whitney, to promote human rights, peace and international cooperation. Betsey Whitney died in 1998.”