talk about it birdie....

Rarely do three well-known art collections come to the auction block in the same season. Even more rarely does one auction house get to sell them all.

Starting Tuesday, Christie's will offer several exceptional works, including a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a red-haired model, one of the centerpieces of the recent exhibition "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" at the Art Institute of Chicago; a 1954 Rothko inspired by Matisse's 1911 "Red Studio"; and an abstract de Kooning from 1977 that has had only one owner: the artist's lawyer, Lee V. Eastman.

Experts at the auction house are trying not to gloat. They know all too well that memories are short and sellers fickle. Only 18 months ago, Sotheby's was in the limelight when it sold "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)," a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, for $104.1 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. And six months from now, it could easily be Sotheby's that catches the next big fish.

But when the fall auction season opens on Tuesday night - the start of two weeks of back-to-back evening auctions - all eyes will be on Christie's. A combination of longstanding relationships, a strong team of experts and aggressive financing are the reasons.