A remarkable group of 12 Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, together estimated at nearly $500 million, is heading to auction after remaining hidden from public view for decades inside a legendary private collection in South America.
Sotheby’s announced Wednesday that the works by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne could set new auction records for both artists when they are offered in New York on Nov. 18.
A sale of that scale would add to growing evidence that wealthy investors are turning to museum-quality art as a haven during periods of economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
The paintings were acquired by the late Argentine collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her husband, sugar industrialist Carlos Pedro Blaquier. Their children are now bringing the collection to market.
Among the most valuable works are van Gogh’s “Châtaigniers en fleurs” (“Chestnut Trees in Flower”), expected to fetch $180 million, and Cézanne’s “Arlequin,” which carries a $120 million estimate.
Neither painting has been exhibited publicly in roughly 50 years.
Helena Newman, Sotheby’s global head of Impressionist and modern art, compared the holdings to a “mini-Musée d’Orsay,” referencing the Paris institution renowned for its exceptional collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces.
“In my 30-plus years at Sotheby’s, I’ve never had the privilege of handling a collection of quite this content and caliber,” Newman said.
Newman described van Gogh’s flowering chestnut trees as a vivid expression of the “explosion of energy and vitality” the artist experienced after leaving a psychiatric asylum in May 1890.
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Van Gogh died by suicide two months later.
Cézanne’s “Arlequin” depicts the artist’s son wearing the costume of the traditional Harlequin character. It is one of four related portraits, while the other three are held by major museums.
The collection also features Paris scenes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas’ depiction of a horse race and a boating image by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Each of those works is valued at tens of millions of dollars.
Philip Hook, an art specialist and former Sotheby’s auctioneer, said the collection had acquired an almost mythical reputation because its owners rarely, if ever, lent the paintings for exhibitions.
“No one knew really what was in it. So now, for this to be revealed, is tremendously exciting,” Hook said.
The collectors, he noted, assembled an unusually focused selection, securing a representative masterpiece by many of the leading figures of Impressionism and post-Impressionism. “That is incredibly difficult to do,” Hook said, adding that they achieved it with “huge, huge style and success.”
Newman expects the Sotheby’s auction to draw interest from around the world, including American technology billionaires, wealthy buyers in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and heavily funded institutions in the Middle East.
Against a backdrop of global economic and geopolitical volatility, Newman said collectors appear to be gravitating toward works with proven historical and cultural importance—paintings that are “unquestionably great.”
“This museum-quality Impressionist collection … is pretty rare,” she said.
