The expected Sotheby’s auction next month of Van Gogh and Cézanne artworks that haven’t been seen publicly in half a century will spark a massive leap in valuation compared to previous public sales, according to auction records.
The works in question, Vincent van Gogh’s “Châtaigniers en fleurs” has an estimated sale price of $180 million, and Paul Cézanne’s “Arlequin” is expected to sell for $120 million.
Van Gogh painted his radiant view of Auvers-sur-Oise in the final months of his life, at the height of his powers. Cézanne’s assertive “Arlequin” depicts his own son and marks painting’s turn toward structure and abstraction, according to the auction house.
The previous public auction record for a van Gogh was $117 million for “Verger avec cyprès” at Christie’s in 2022. The last sold Cézanne work, “La Montagne Sainte Victore,” went for $137 million also Christie’s the same year.
Those paintings were part of another priceless collection amassed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose Impressionist/Post-Impressionist works were unrivaled at the time.
The latest paintings are among a dozen Impressionist and post-Impressionist artworks from the long unseen collection of Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her Argentine sugar magnate husband Carlos Pedro Blaquier,
The Blaquiers began collecting in the 1960s, working closely with leading galleries including Lefevre and Wildenstein to build this exceptional survey of Impressionist and Modern art.
Also in the collection are Parisian cityscapes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, a horse-racing image by Edgar Degas and a boating scene by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Sotheby’s calls the collection one of the finest remaining in private hands today, “charting the birth of modern art through paintings of a caliber rarely seen outside museums and rarer still on the market.
“Spanning the first experiments of Impressionism in the early 1870s, through the radical innovations of Post-Impressionism, to the dawn of Fauvism that ushered in a new era of art, it is more akin to a private museum than a traditional collection: a once-in-a-generation opportunity to encounter the artists who redefined painting.”
The Nov. 18 sale at Sotheby’s in New York City is being driven by the quest for hard assets among the wealthy, which serve as a hedge against uncertainty and inflation. The trend is not only affecting the price of art, but also antique and exotic cars, jewelery and other collectables.
“In my 30-plus years at Sotheby’s, I’ve never had the privilege of handling a collection of quite this content and caliber,” Helena Newman, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art, told The Associated Press.
The art world is on fire right now with buyers vying for highly valued masterpieces. There are an estimated 3,428 billionaires around the world, a significant increase from about 2,000 billionaires a decade ago.
All are potential bidders along with institutions and Middle Eastern potentates.
“In times where there’s a lot of global macro geopolitical uncertainty, it’s almost like there’s a return to really established, tried and tested” works that are “unquestionably great,” Newman said.
Separately, Sotheby’s in London will be offering for auction a J.M.W. Turner landscape that could eclipse a record for his works. Estimates are the painting, one of his best know, could bring $57 million. It would be a new record for the British artist.
The painting “Rome, From Mount Aventine” will be on display at the Palazzo Rondinini in the Rome before hitting the auction block on Dec. 9, the auction house said.
The 1836 work, a sweeping vista of Rome from the Aventine Hill is thought to be among the most significant Turner works remaining in private hands, according to the auction house.
The painting last sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 for $47.6 million, a record then for a Turner work. This is the first time it will change hands since then.
Turner’s patron Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro commissioned the painting. Former British Prime Minister Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery, bought the painting for his wife, Hannah de Rothschild, one of Britain’s wealthiest women at the time.
The painting remained in the Rosebery family until the 2014 sale nearly a century later.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”