An oil painting by German expressionist Franz Marc - returned by a German museum to the descendents of a Jewish collector who fled the Nazis - could fetch a record price for the artist at auction next month.

Marc's The Foxes (Die Füchse), a canvas featuring two colorful intertwined foxes, is estimated to bring about 35 million pounds ($47 million, excluding fees) at a Christie's sale in London on March 1.

"It'll be an amazing moment for the art world because Franz Marc's important pictures are incredibly rare," Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie’s global president, told Reuters.

Born in Munich in 1880, Marc died at age 36 during the World War One battle of Verdun. Few works are left in private hands. The artist's auction record stands with Weidende Pferde III (1910), which sold for £12.3 million ($24.4 million, including fees) at Sotheby’s London in 2008.

According to Christie's, The Foxes was acquired in 1928 by German-Jewish collector Kurt Grawi, and his wife Else, who were forced to sell the work in order to escape Nazi Germany. After imprisonment by the Nazis, Grawi sold the painting to fund his family's emigration to Chile. The painting then went through a series of owners until it was gifted in 1962 to the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf.

"The picture was restituted to the family last year after a long process, and they had already made the decision that when they got it back, that it would be put onto the open market for the next great collector to have the opportunity to own it," Pylkkänen said.

Germany's Limbach Commission, which investigates cases of Nazi-seized cultural property, recommened in March 2021 that the painting be returned to the Grawi family's heirs as it had been sold "under duress."

"The Foxes" will tour in Hong Kong and New York in February before heading to London for sale. Christie's inaugural 20/21 Shanghai to London series of marquee sales will begin with bidding livestreamed from its new Shanghai location.