This Christie's auction is set to break records

STORY: Paintings by Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh come from the estate of late Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen.

Described as "an historic sale", by auction house Christie's, the collection of more than 150 pieces spans 500 years of groundbreaking art from Jan Brueghel The Younger to Lucian Freud.

At the Paris stop of the tour, artworks included Rene Magritte's 'La Voix du Sang', which is expected to fetch more than $12 million, and Paul Gauguin's 'Maternite II', estimated at $90 million.

Allen, co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with school friend Bill Gates before creating his first charitable foundation in 1986 and the Museum of Pop Culture in 2000. Allen died in 2018, aged 65.

The $1 billion estimated collection will be sold in two live auctions at Christie's Rockefeller Center in New York on Nov. 9-10.