LONDON.- Continuing Sotheby’s long tradition of specialist sales in Scandinavian art, the company will once again this year devote a section of its forthcoming sale of 19th Century European Paintings to Scandinavian works. Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish artists will be represented in the bi-annual sale to be held in London on Tuesday, 23 November 2010. Headlining the sale is a masterpiece by Norwegian artist Gerhard Munthe (1849-1929), never before offered at auction. Estimated at £300,000-500,000, Idyll is a seminal work by the artist, won by the grandfather of the present owner in a lottery organized by the Kunstforeningen in Bergen in December 1886, the year in which it was painted (lot 121). The painting depicts Munthe’s then 17-year-old fiancée, Sigrun Sandberg, sitting in profile next to Bacchus, her dog, in a Nordic summer landscape. Her pure white dress, echoing the daisies in the foreground, provide