most expensive paintings

When Will You Marry? by Paul Gauguin

This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The earliest sale on the list (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from 1987, and more than tripled the previous record price, set only two years before, introducing a new era in top picture prices. The sale was also significant in that for the first time a "modern" painting (in this case from 1888) became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which had always previously held it. The current record price is approximately $300 million paid for Willem de Kooning's Interchange in November 2015, perhaps matched by the sale for "close to $300 million" of Paul Gauguin's When Will You Marry? in February 2015.

Contents

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• 1Background
• 2Van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol
• 3Interactive graph
• 4List of highest prices paid
• 5See also
• 6Notes
• 7References
• 8External links

Background[edit]

The world's most famous paintings, especially old master works done before 1803, are generally owned or held at museums, for viewing by patrons. The museums very rarely sell them, and as such, they are quite literally priceless. Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. On permanent display at The Louvre museum in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$782 million in 2016.^[1]

The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of £24.75 million ($83 million in current dollars) it tripled the previous record and introduced a new era in top art sales. Before this, the highest absolute price paid for a painting was £8.1 million ($23 million in current dollars) paid by theJ. Paul Getty Museum for Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi at Christie's in London on April 18, 1985.^[2] In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by theNational Gallery of Art when in February 1967 they acquired Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for around $5 million ($35 million in current dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. The sale of Van Gogh's Sunflowers was also significant in that for the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which previously had dominated the market. In contrast, there are currently only seven pre-1850 paintings among the top 48 listed.

An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. While his shares were of limited value when he was awarded them, by the time of Facebook's IPO they were valued at around $200m.^[3]

Van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol[edit]

The Red Vineyard, the only paintingVincent van Gogh sold during his lifetime.

Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are by far the best represented artists in the list. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, Van Gogh (supposedly) sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 francs (about $1800 in 2011) to the impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch.^[4] His seven paintings in the list below alone were sold for over 722 million current dollars.

Interactive graph[edit]

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List of highest prices paid[edit]

This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in the current year.^{[note 1]} Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. The inflation adjustment may change as recent inflation rates are often revised. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange rate fluctuations. Paintings are only listed once, i.e. for the highest price sold.

Adjusted price (in millions)	Original price (in millions)	Painting	Image	Artist	Year	Date of sale	Rank at sale	Seller	Buyer	Auction house
~$300	~$300	Interchange		Willem de Kooning	1955	September 2015	1 or 2 [note 2]	David GeffenFoundation	Kenneth C. Griffin	Private sale[5]
~$300	~$300[note 3]	Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?)		Paul Gauguin	1892	February 2015	1 or 2 [note 4]	Rudolf Staechelinfamily	Unknown, possibly the State of Qatar	Private sale[6]
$272 +	$259 +[note 5]	The Card Players		Paul Cézanne	1892/93	April 2011	1	George Embiricos	State of Qatar	Private sale [7][8][9]
~$200	~$200	Number 17A		Jackson Pollock	1948	September 2015	4	David Geffen Foundation	Kenneth C. Griffin	Private sale[5]
$186	$186 (€140)	No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red)		Mark Rothko	1951	August 2014	2	Cherise Moueix	Dmitry Rybolovlev	Private sale via Yves Bouvier [10]
$180	$180 (€160M for pair)	Pendant portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit		Rembrandt	1634	September 2015	4	Éric de Rothschild	Rijksmuseum Louvre	Private sale [11]
$179.4	$179.4	Les Femmes d'Alger ("Version O")		Pablo Picasso	1955	May 11, 2015	4	Private collection	Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani[12]	Christie's, New York.[13]
$170.4	$170.4	Nu Couché		Amedeo Modigliani	1917/18	November 9, 2015	6	Laura Mattioli Rossi	Liu Yiqian [14]	Christie's, New York.[15]
$164.3	$140	No. 5, 1948		Jackson Pollock	1948	November 2, 2006	1	David Geffen	David Martinez	Private sale viaSotheby's[16]
$161.4	$137.5	Woman III		Willem de Kooning	1953	November 18, 2006	2	David Geffen	Steven A. Cohen	Private sale viaLarry Gagosian[17]
$158.5	$135	Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I		Gustav Klimt	1907	June 18, 2006	1	Maria Altmann	Ronald Lauder, Neue Galerie	Private sale viaChristie's[18]
$157.5	$155	Le Rêve		Pablo Picasso	1932	March 26, 2013	5	Steve Wynn	Steven A. Cohen	Private sale[19]
$149.4	$82.5	Portrait of Dr. Gachet		Vincent van Gogh	1890	May 15, 1990	1	Siegfried Kramarsky (de) family	Ryoei Saito[note 6]	Christie's, New York
$144.7	$142.4	Three Studies of Lucian Freud		Francis Bacon	1969	November 12, 2013	7	[note 7]	Elaine Wynn, ex-wife of Steve Wynn[24]	Christie's, New York[25]
$141.5	$78.1	Bal du moulin de la Galette [note 8]		Pierre-Auguste Renoir	1876	May 17, 1990	2	Betsey Whitney	Ryoei Saito [note 9]	Sotheby's, New York
$130.5	$104.2	Garçon à la pipe		Pablo Picasso	1905	May 4, 2004	3	Greentree foundation (Whitney family)	Barilla Group?[26]	Sotheby's, New York[27]
$129.5	$127.5	Salvator Mundi		Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci	1490-1519	May 2013	9	Robert Simon	Dmitry Rybolovlev	Private sale via Yves Bouvier[10][28]
$123.6	$119.9	The Scream [note 10]		Edvard Munch	1895	May 2, 2012	8	Petter Olsen	Leon Black[29]	Sotheby's, New York
$122	$118	Reclining Nude With Blue Cushion		Amedeo Modigliani	1917	2012	8	Steven A. Cohen	Dmitry Rybolovlev	Private sale viaYves Bouvier [10]
$119.4	$110.0	Flag [note 11]		Jasper Johns	1954	March 2010	7	Jean-Christophe Castelli	Steven A. Cohen	Private sale, estimated price[30]
$115.5	$106.5	Nude, Green Leaves and Bust		Pablo Picasso	1932	May 4, 2010	8	Frances Lasker Brody estate		Christie's, New York[31]
$114.5	$58 plus exchange of works[note 12]	Portrait of Joseph Roulin		Vincent van Gogh	1889	August 1, 1989	1	Private collection, Zürich	Museum of Modern Art New York	Private sale via Thomas Ammann, Fine Art Zurich[32]
$112.3	$53.9	Irises		Vincent van Gogh	1889	November 11, 1987	1	son of Joan Whitney Payson	Alan Bond [note 13]	Sotheby's, New York
$111.8	$95.2	Dora Maar au Chat		Pablo Picasso	1941	May 3, 2006	5	Gidwitz family	Boris Ivanishvili[33]	Sotheby's, New York[34]
$109.9	$100.0	Eight Elvises		Andy Warhol	1963	October 2008	10	Annibale Berlingieri	Possibly the State of Qatar[35][36]	Private sale viaPhilippe Ségalot[37]
$107.4 +	$105.7 +[note 14] (¥10,300)	Anna's Light		Barnett Newman	1968	October 4, 2013	18	DIC Corp.		Private sale[38][39][40]
$107.1	$105.4	Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)		Andy Warhol	1963	November 13, 2013	20			Sotheby's, New York[41]
$103.8	$71.5	Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe		Vincent van Gogh	1889	November 19, 1998	5	Heirs of Jacques Koerfer (de)		Christie's, New York
$103.2	$87.9	Adele Bloch-Bauer II		Gustav Klimt	1912	November 2, 2006	10	Maria Altmann		Christie's, New York
$102	$100	La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du bosquet du Château Noir		Paul Cézanne	1904	2013 [note 15]	20	Edsel and Eleanor Ford House	State of Qatar [42]	Private sale[43][44]
$100.9	$76.7 (£49.5)	Massacre of the Innocents		Peter Paul Rubens	1611	July 10, 2002	6	an Austrian family	Kenneth Thomson[note 16]	Sotheby's, London
$95.4	$95.4	Nurse		Roy Lichtenstein	1964	November 9, 2015	30			Christie's, New York.[15]
$94.8	$86.3	Triptych, 1976		Francis Bacon	1976	May 14, 2008	13	Moueix Family[46]	Roman Abramovich[47]	Sotheby's, New York[48]
$94.2	$49.3 (F300)	Les Noces de Pierrette		Pablo Picasso	1905	November 30, 1989	3	Fredrik Roos (sv)[49]	Tomonori Tsurumaki	Binoche et GodeauParis
$93.9	$80.0	False Start		Jasper Johns	1959	October 12, 2006	11	David Geffen	Kenneth C. Griffin	Private sale via Richard Gray.[50]
$93.4	$57	A Wheatfield with Cypresses		Vincent van Gogh	1889	May 1993	6	son of Emil Georg Bührle	Walter H. Annenberg[note 17]	Private sale via Steven Mazoh
$91.3	$47.8	Yo, Picasso		Pablo Picasso	1901	May 9, 1989	2	Wendell Cherry	Stavros Niarchos	Sotheby's, New York
$91.3	$80.0	Turquoise Marilyn		Andy Warhol	1964	May 20, 2007	17	Stefan Edlis	Steven A. Cohen	Private sale via Larry Gagosian[51]
$90	$70.0	Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto, in Armor with a Page		Titian	1533	November 2003	10	AXA insurance company	Getty Museum	Private sale via Hervé Aaron [52][53]
$89.6	$86.9	Orange, Red, Yellow		Mark Rothko	1961	May 8, 2012	26	Estate of David Pincus		Christie's, New York[54]
$88.5	$80.5 (£40.9)	Le Bassin aux Nymphéas		Claude Monet	1919	June 24, 2008	20	J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller		Christie's, London[55]
$85.9	$60.5	Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier		Paul Cézanne	1894	May 10, 1999	9	Whitney Family[note 18]		Sotheby's, New York
$84.1	$84.2	Black Fire I		Barnett Newman	1961	May 13, 2014	35	Private Collection	Anonymous	Christie's, New York.[57]
$83.1	$72.8	White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)		Mark Rothko	1950	May 15, 2007	19	David Rockefeller, Sr.	Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani [58]	Sotheby's, New York[59]
$82.6	$39.7 (£24.75)	Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers		Vincent van Gogh	1888	March 30, 1987	1	Helen Beatty, daughter-in-law of Chester Beatty	Yasuo Goto, Yasuda Comp.	Christie's, London
$81.9	$81.9	Triple Elvis		Andy Warhol	1963	November 12, 2014	39	WestSpiel (de) [60]		Christie's, New York [61]
$81.9	$81.9	No. 10		Mark Rothko	1958	May 13, 2015	42			Christie's, New York[62][63]
$81.8	$71.7	Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)		Andy Warhol	1963	May 16, 2007	21	Private collection, Zürich	Philip Niarchos	Christie's, New York[64]
$80.8	$80.8	Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards		Francis Bacon	1984	May 13, 2014	39	Private Collection	Anonymous	Christie's, New York.[57]
~$79	~$75 (€50-60)[note 19]	Darmstadt Madonna		Hans Holbein	1526	July 12, 2011	29	Donatus, Landgrave of Hesse	Reinhold Würth	Private sale via Christoph Graf Douglas[65]
$77.9	$70.6 (£50)	Diana and Actaeon		Titian	1556–1559	February 1, 2009	26	Duke of Sutherland	National Galleries of Scotland & National Gallery, London	Private sale[66][67][68]
$77.7	$40.7	Au Lapin Agile		Pablo Picasso	1904	November 27, 1989	5	daughter of Joan Whitney Payson	Walter H. Annenberg	Sotheby's, New York
$77.6	$68	The Gross Clinic		Thomas Eakins	1875	April 12, 2007	21	Thomas Jefferson University	Philadelphia Museum of Art	Private sale.[69]
$77.4	$75.1	No 1 (Royal Red and Blue)		Mark Rothko	1954	November 13, 2012	36	John and Anne Marion		Sotheby's, New York[70]
$77.1	$38.5 (£20.9)	Acrobate et jeune arlequin [note 20]		Pablo Picasso	1905	November 28, 1988	3	Heir of Roger Janssen? [note 21]	Mitsukoshi	Christie's, London
$75.6	$55.0	Femme aux Bras Croisés		Pablo Picasso	1902	November 8, 2000	13	McCormick family, Chicago		Christie's, New York[71]
$74.8	$69.0	Nude Sitting on a Divan ("La Belle Romaine")		Amedeo Modigliani	1917	November 2, 2010	33	Halit Cıngıllıoglu[72]		Sotheby's, New York[73]
$74.5	$63.5	Police Gazette[74]		Willem de Kooning	1955	October 12, 2006	20	David Geffen	Steven A. Cohen	Private sale via Richard Gray.[50]
$73.9	$71.7 (£45)	Diana and Callisto		Titian	1556–1559	March 2, 2012	38	Duke of Sutherland	National Galleries of Scotland & National Gallery, London	Private sale [75]
$70.5	$70.5	Untitled (New York City)		Cy Twombly	1968	November 11, 2015		Family of Sydney M. Irmas		Christie's, New York [76]
$70.3	$49.5	Femme assise dans un jardin		Pablo Picasso	1938	November 10, 1999	13	Robert Saidenberg[77]		Sotheby's, New York
$70	$47.5	Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat		Vincent van Gogh	1890	1997	12		Steve Wynn[note 22]	Private sale via Acquavella Galleries Inc., New York[79]
$69.6	$69.6	Untitled		Cy Twombly	1970	November 12, 2014	54	Nicola del Roscio[60]		Christie's, New York [80]
$69.6	$69.6	Four Marlons		Andy Warhol	1966	November 12, 2014	54	WestSpiel [60]		Christie's, New York [81]
$68.9	$65.5 (¥425.5)	Eagle Standing on Pine Tree[82]		Qi Baishi	1946	May 22, 2011	38	Liu Yiqian	Hunan TV & Broadcast Intermediary Co[83]	China Guardian Auctions
$68.8	$63.4	Men in Her Life		Andy Warhol	1962	November 8, 2010	37	Jose Mugrabi	Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani [84]	Phillips de Pury & Company[85]
$67.5	$67.45	La Gommeuse		Pablo Picasso	1901	November 5, 2015		William I. Koch		Sotheby's, New York.[86][87]
$67.4	$67.4	Buste de femme (Femme à la résille)		Pablo Picasso	1938	May 11, 2015		Steve Wynn	Joseph Lau[88]	Christie's, New York.[13]
$67.2	$35.2	Portrait of a Halberdier		Pontormo	1537	May 31, 1989	5	Chauncey Stillman	Getty Museum	Christie's, New York
$66.3	$66.3	L’Allée des Alyscamps		Vincent van Gogh	1888	May 5, 2015	60			Sotheby's, New York[89]
$66.2	$66.2	Untitled		Mark Rothko	1952	May 13, 2014	54	Private Collection	Anonymous	Christie's, New York.[57]
$65.9	$60.0	Suprematist Composition		Kazimir Malevich	1916	November 3, 2008	34	Heirs of Kazimir Malevich		Sotheby's, New York[90]
$65.4	$62.1 (¥402.5)	Zhichuan Resettlement[91]		Wang Meng	1350	June 4, 2011	42			Beijing Poly Auction
$65.1	$65.1	Spring (Le Printemps)		Édouard Manet	1881	November 5, 2014	56		Getty Museum	Christie's, New York[92]

See also[edit]

• Cultural commodification
• List of most expensive photographs
• List of most expensive sculptures

Notes[edit]

1. Jump up^