A rare piece of Hollywood art history is about to hit the auction block — and low estimates put its worth at $60 million. It’s a painting by David Hockney, the British master who first landed on our shores in 1964 and turned swimming pools into high art. After a retrospective of his work closed last month at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, a private European collector who’d lent the exhibition one of Hockney’s most valuable works decided it was time to part with the double portrait of author Christopher Isherwood and his partner, artist Don Bachardy, painted in 1968.

Isherwood, whose books have been turned into several films (1972’s Cabaret , 2009’s A Single Man ), was 30 years Bachardy’s senior when they met in 1948. Hockney, who met the couple decades into their relationship

See Full Page