Sotheby’s has unveiled a headline consignment of the New York autumn season: the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, a group of 12 Impressionist and modern masterpieces expected to realise around US$450 million when it comes under the hammer on 18 November.
Leading the sale are two paintings unseen in public for more than half a century. Vincent van Gogh's Châtaigniers en fleurs, painted in the final months of his life, carries an estimate of about US$180 million, while Paul Cézanne's Arlequin, the only one of four harlequin portraits of his son still in private hands, is expected to fetch about US$120 million. Both are poised to reset the artists’ auction records.
Ahead of the New York auction, highlights from the collection will travel to Asia in October, with stops in Taipei and Hong Kong. They include works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet; the Van Gogh will be shown only in Hong Kong.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) | Châtaigniers en fleurs, oil on canvas
Executed in Auvers, circa 24 May 1890
70 x 58 cm
Estimate: in the region of US$180 million
Described by Sotheby’s as “a miniature Musée d’Orsay,” the collection was assembled by Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, among Argentina’s foremost art collectors. Nelly was an heir to Ledesma, the country's sugar and agribusiness giant, which Carlos chaired for more than four decades. Nelly died in 2020 and Carlos in 2023, and the works are now being offered by their children.
The consignment follows another blockbuster single-owner sale this spring, when Christie’s sold 16 works from media tycoon S.I. Newhouse’s collection for US$630.8 million. That auction was led by two nine-figure lots: Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, which made US$181.2 million, and Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde, which fetched US$107.6 million.
Van Gogh’s auction record stands at US$117.2 million, set in 2022 when Verger avec cyprès, painted in Arles in 1888, sold in Christie’s Paul Allen sale. With an estimate of around US$180 million, Châtaigniers en fleurs could comfortably surpass that mark and is poised to enter the ranks of the three most expensive paintings ever sold at auction.
The current top three are:
- Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi | Sold: US$450,312,500, Christie’s New York, 2017
- Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer | Sold: US$236,360,000, Sotheby’s New York, 2025, from the collection of cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder
- Andy Warhol, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn | Sold: US$195,040,000, Christie’s New York, 2022, from the Thomas and Doris Ammann Collection
The Blaquier family
Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, 65.7 x 45.7 cm | Sold: US$450,312,500, Christie’s New York, 2017
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, 180.4 x 130.5 cm | Sold: US$236,360,000, Sotheby’s New York, 2025
Andy Warhol, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 101.6 x 101.6 cm | Sold: US$195,040,000, Christie’s New York, 2022
Completed around 24 May 1890, only days after Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, Châtaigniers en fleurs comes from the final, feverishly productive period of the artist’s life. Newly released from the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, he settled in the village north of Paris to be closer to his brother Theo and under the care of Dr Paul Gachet.
For a brief moment, Auvers seemed to offer renewal. Van Gogh wrote of the "beautiful greenery in abundance" and of his conviction that "the desire to work will devour me and make me insensible to everything else and in a good mood."
In the weeks that followed, he painted with remarkable urgency, producing some of the best-known works of his career, among them Portrait of Dr Gachet, The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise and Wheatfield with Crows. According to Sotheby's, only eight landscapes from these final months remain in private hands.
After Van Gogh's death in July 1890, Châtaigniers en fleurs passed through the artist's family before entering the collections of the German publisher Samuel Fischer and George “Buddy” De Sylva, the American songwriter, film producer and co-founder of Capitol Records. The Blaquiers acquired it from Wildenstein in 1975, and it has not been publicly exhibited since.
The present lot
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet (1890) | Sold: US$82.5 million, Christie's New York,1990
Vincent van Gogh, Verger avec cyprès (1888) | Sold: US$117,180,000, Christie's New York, 2022 (Auction record for the artist)
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) | Arlequin, oil on canvas
Executed in 1888-90
92.7 x 65.7 cm
Estimate: in the region of US$120 million
Arlequin belongs to a group of 15 late figure paintings Cézanne made between 1888 and 1896, including the Harlequins, the Boy in a Red Waistcoat series, The Card Players and the Smoker compositions. Only two remain outside museums.
The only other painting from the group to have come to market in recent times is The Card Players, now in the Qatari national collection, reportedly acquired in 2011 for US$250 million – then the highest price ever recorded for a work of art. Cézanne’s auction record remains US$137.8 million, set by a Mont Sainte-Victoire landscape in the Paul Allen sale.
Paul Cézanne, The Card Players (1888-1890) | Reportedly sold for US$250 million in 2011, now in the Qatari national collection
Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888-1890) | Sold: US$137,790,000, Christie's New York, 2022 (Auction record for the artist)
Paul Cézanne, Harlequin (1888-1890), 62.3 x 47.2 cm | Pola Museum of Art in Kanagawa
Painted between 1888 and 1890, Cézanne’s four Harlequin pictures were the first for which his son Paul posed. The series was inspired in part by the Mardi Gras processions of Aix-en-Provence, whose annual masquerades were familiar to Cézanne from childhood. Unlike Watteau before him and Picasso after, Cézanne set aside Harlequin’s theatrical character and focused on the figure’s stillness and structure.
Only one other version of Arlequin has appeared at auction: a smaller 1890 canvas, now in the Pola Museum of Art in Kanagawa, which sold at Sotheby’s London in 1988 for US$8.1 million, then the second-highest price for Cézanne at auction. The present work is the only example from the series still in private hands.
From 1936, Arlequin hung for around two decades at Merton Hall in Cambridge, the Rothschild family home, before passing to the Lefevre Gallery. It entered the Blaquier collection in 1975, following appearances in major Cézanne exhibitions at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate.
Other highlights to be exhibited in Asia from the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection include Pissarro’s Parisian streetscape; Renoir’s En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque), a boating scene painted in the summer of 1877, the year the Impressionists took their name; and an early Impressionist landscape by Monet. The Renoir and Pissarro have never been offered at auction.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) | La Place du Théâtre-Français et l’avenue de l’Opéra, soleil d’après-midi en hiver, oil on canvas
Executed in 1898
73 x 92 cm
Estimate: US$30,000,000 - 40,000,000
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) | En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque), oil on canvas
Executed in 1877
43 x 72 cm
Estimate: US$25,000,000 - 35,000,000
Claude Monet (1840-1926) | Le Jardin des Tuileries, oil on canvas
Executed in 1876
59.5 x 81.8 cm
Estimate: US$15,000,000 - 20,000,000
Other Lots from the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) | Avant la course, pastel on paper mounted on board
Executed circa 1893
65 x 73 cm
Estimate: US$20,000,000 - 30,000,000
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) | Fleurs dans une coupe, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1899-1901
31 x 47.6 cm
Estimate: US$10,000,000 - 15,000,000
André Derain (1880-1954) | Bateaux au port de Collioure, oil on canvas
Executed in Collioure in 1905
38.2 x 45.9 cm
Estimate: US$8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Sotheby's New York
Sale: Legendary: The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection Evening Auction
Date and Time: 18 November 2026 | 6 pm (New York local time)
Number of Lots: 12
Preview:
- London – 30 September - 1 October | 34-35 New Bond Street
- Taipei – 5 - 6 October
- Hong Kong – 13 - 15 October | Landmark Chater, 8 Connaught Road Central, Central
- Paris – 19 - 23 October | 83, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré