Hundreds queue in Hong Kong to see long-unseen Van Gogh before $180 million sale

Public display in Hong Kong

Hundreds of people queued in Hong Kong on Tuesday, 13 October, to see "Châtaigniers en fleurs" ("Chestnut Trees in Blossom"), a Vincent van Gogh painting that had not been publicly exhibited in more than six decades. AFP reported that the queue formed outside a Hong Kong gallery, where the work was on show before its sale in New York. The painting depicts a massive blossoming chestnut tree whose canopy dominates the composition. It was made in May 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise in France, where Van Gogh died about two months later, aged 37. AFP reported that during these final days he was producing work at a frantic rate, averaging around one work a day. Visitors included Li Shanshan, a 50-year-old art lover who travelled about two and a half hours from the southern city of Shenzhen.

I'd never heard of this painting before, so I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

Expected sale and record price

Sotheby's will offer the painting at its New York auction on 18 November, where it is expected to fetch about $180 million. Scott Niichel, of Sotheby's modern and contemporary art department in New York, said the work is poised to set a new auction record for a Van Gogh. The current record is "Orchard with Cypresses", which sold for $117.2 million at auction in 2022, according to AFP. Reuters frames the sale as a test of the high-end art market, where collectors keep competing for scarce trophy works despite broader economic uncertainty. Niichel described the painting in these words:

This is a moment of extraordinary optimism, frenetic energy, enthusiasm, passion, and colour in the artist's body of work.

A collection of 12 long-unseen works

The painting will be sold as part of a group of 12 long-unseen works, which AFP reported belonged to the late Argentine collectors Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and Carlos Pedro Blaquier. The group also includes works by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne. Five works from the collection were unveiled at Sotheby's in London in late September, including Cezanne's "Arlequin" and Monet's "Le Jardin des Tuileries". The painting is one of approximately 70 works Van Gogh created after leaving the psychiatric asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a period whose pictures rarely come to market.

Ownership history

After Van Gogh's death in July 1890, the painting passed to his brother Theo, then to Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger and their son Vincent Willem. German publisher Samuel Fischer, founder of S. Fischer Verlag, later owned it before it entered the collection of George "Buddy" DeSylva, the American songwriter, film producer and co-founder of Capitol Records. In 1953 collector Harriet Harris-Jonas acquired it, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art organised visits for patrons to view works in her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. The Blaquier family later acquired the painting.

What comes next

Bets are open on who will buy the painting, and Niichel told AFP that "anything is possible". He added the following about Asian interest:

Our revealing in Hong Kong suggests that Asia is certainly a possibility.

The auction is set for 18 November in New York.