There’s no question that the auction houses have been feeling their way through the market for works by Andy Warhol. It has mostly been dormant for the last couple of years. Buyers have occasionally shown that there is plenty of demand for works that seem fresh or intriguing.

With that in mind, Sotheby’s has one of Warhol’s first self portrait series that has not been seen on the market for 30 years and only sold once before by Thomas Ammann. They are offering the work for £5-7m in London later this month.

Six years ago, another work from this same series was sold at Christie’s for $38m. That work was an assemblage of four canvases. So Sotheby’s estimate is somewhat conservative if you take a simple-minded approach to estimating.