Van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Trees Heads to Sotheby's New York in November
A Vincent van Gogh painting that has been hidden away for more than 60 years will go under the hammer at Sotheby's in New York on 18 November, as the top lot in a sale from the Blaquier-Arrieta family collection.
The work is Blossoming Chestnut Trees, painted in May 1890. Sotheby's, one of the world's largest auction houses, is expected to sell it for around US$180 million. That figure is the estimate, the auction house's expected price range, and it is the bid the auctioneer closes on, before fees, that counts as the hammer price. With the buyer's premium, the fee a buyer pays on top of the hammer price, the total is expected to reach at least US$207 million, The Art Newspaper reported. That would be a record for a Van Gogh at auction.
The painting has a newly traced history. One of its earliest owners was Gustave Fayet, a French collector of modern art before the First World War. Fayet's diary records that on 9 January 1909 he paid 3,800 francs for the picture, the equivalent at the time of US$750. Paris dealer Eugène Druet handled the sale. He had bought the work from the Prince de Wagram, a member of the French Rothschild family.
Fayet's own description helped link the painting to the sale. He wrote of "a house on the road taken by passers-by," a detail that matches the Sotheby's picture. Van Gogh painted another chestnut-tree landscape from Auvers-sur-Oise, now in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, but it has no people in it. This provenance, the documented chain of ownership, had not previously appeared in Van Gogh literature.
The painting was meant to be seen in Paris first. It was lent to the exhibition Gustave Fayet: Collector - Artist Designer at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a private art centre in Paris, and was included in the catalogue. The loan was withdrawn at a late stage so the work could be offered in the November sale. The exhibition runs until 8 March 2027.
Fayet bought another Van Gogh from Druet on the same day. White Huts at Saintes-Maries (June 1888) passed to the Kunsthaus Zürich after Fayet died in 1934, and it is now part of the Paris show. The two purchases on one day show how closely Fayet and Druet worked at that time.
The Art Newspaper published the story as part of its Adventures with Van Gogh series, which follows the paths of the artist's works from one owner to the next. For buyers, the sale is a chance to bid on one of the few Van Goghs still in private hands. For the museums that have borrowed or hoped to borrow such works, it is a reminder of how much of this history sits in family collections, out of public view.
The sale takes place at Sotheby's New York on 18 November. Bidding results and final prices will be published after the auction closes.
