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Sotheby’s Lands the $450 Million Blaquier Collection, Led by a $180M Van Gogh

Long hidden from public view, the legendary Argentine collection brings 12 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces to market, including Van Gogh's 'Châtaignier en fleurs roses et blanches' and a record-seeking Cézanne.

With Armory Week officially opening the fall market season in New York, auction houses are rolling out, one after another, the major collections headed for their rostra in November. Following Sotheby’s scoring Dick Hedreen’s $90 million trove and Christie’s securing the Herbert Lust Collection, the former has unveiled the season’s biggest consignment so far: a $450 million group described as the El Dorado of collections, comprising a mere 12 long-unseen masterpieces from Argentine collectors Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier.

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Leading the group is a stunning Van Gogh, Châtaignier en fleurs roses et blanches, which alone is expected to fetch $180 million, a price that would shatter the artist’s auction record. Van Gogh painted the work in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he spent the final two months of his life after leaving the asylum at Saint-Rémy. Ranked alongside MoMA’s The Starry Night, the Musée d’Orsay’s The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise and Wheatfield with Crows, now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the canvas carries a new optimism, transforming the tumultuous, thickly impastoed agitation of the preceding months into a spark of life and energy and shifting toward vibrant tones that celebrate the lush, blossoming greenery of the French countryside. Writing to his brother that year, Van Gogh described how the “beautiful greenery in abundance” was reawakening his drive to paint: “the desire to work will devour me and make me insensible to everything else and in a good mood.”

Its provenance makes the painting even more extraordinary. After Van Gogh’s death in July 1890, the work passed to his brother Theo, then to Theo’s widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, and their son, Vincent Willem. Following a period in the family’s possession, it entered the collection of Samuel Fischer, founder of the publishing house S. Fischer Verlag, which first published literary figures including Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Arthur Schnitzler. Another celebrated owner was George “Buddy” Gard DeSylva, the American songwriter, film producer and co-founder of Capitol Records. In 1953, the painting was purchased by Harriet Harris-Jonas, whose collection was so renowned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art arranged tours for patrons to view it in her Fifth Avenue apartment. The Blaquiers acquired the work from Wildenstein in 1975, and it has not been exhibited publicly since.

Also expected to set a new artist record........

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