Old Masters take centre stage in New York this week with a number of auctions as well as the dealer event, the week-long Master Drawings New York. This opens on Saturday with all 23 galleries staying open in the evening. While US dealers are in the majority, some foreigners also participate – including Londoner Lowell Libson showing at Mitchell-Innes & Nash and the Madrid-based José de la Mano at Arader Galleries. Libson always has lovely things, including a portrait of a boy by Sir Thomas Lawrence priced in the region of £120,000. And the French dealer Laura Pecheur, participating for the first time, is bringing a show of 40 watercolours and drawings by Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and muse, famously known as la femme qui pleure (the crying woman).

As for the Old Master auctions, the offerings are far stronger in New York than they were in London last December. Christie’s kicks off on Wednesday with an evening sale featuring one of the last two Memlings in private hands: “The Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child”, estimated at $6m-$8m. Also attracting a lot of interest is Gerrit Dou’s “A Young Lady Playing a Clavichord”, estimated at $1m-$2m. This is a rediscovery, having been sold by Duveen in 1927, and in the same family ever since.

Sotheby’s holds its Old Master sale on Thursday: among the standouts is a piece by the top Dutch flower painter Jan van Huysum (est $4m-$6m), which comes from the estate of Lady Forte of Trusthouse Forte. But the real buzz is about another still life – a crisp, gorgeous arrangement of flowers set in a niche by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder from about 1618, estimated at $1m-$1.5m but tipped to soar much higher, despite having been cleaned by the auction house. It was deaccessioned from the Hermitage museum in 1932: a stellar provenance.