Van Gogh painting fetches $66.3 mn at Sotheby’s auction

Sotheby’s has sold a Van Gogh painting for $66.3 million, the highest price paid for a work by the Dutch artist since 1998, Efe news agency reported.

The first major auction of the spring season also saw one of Claude Monet’s water lilies sold for $54 million.

Van Gogh’s “L’allée Des Alyscamps” was the top sale at the New York-based auction house’s Impressionist and modern art sale on Tuesday, going to an Asian private collector after five bidders chased the price up.

Van Gogh painted the landscape, previously valued at $40 million, in 1888 during his stay in Arles, France, where he created some of his most famous works, including “Tournesols” and “L’Arlesienne”.

The oil painting sold on Tuesday is the third most expensive painting by the artist to be sold by Sotheby’s, after “Portrait du docteur Gachet” sold for $82.4 million in 1990 and a self-portrait fetched $71.5 million in 1998.

The other stand-out sale at the auction was “Les Nymphéas”, one of Monet’s iconic waterlilies paintings, sold for $54 million after a bidding war between George Wachter, chairman of Sotheby’s North and South America, and Sotheby’s Asia chairman Patti Wong.

Other Monet works at auction included “Bassin aux nymphéas, les rosiers” sold for $20.4 million to an Asian collector, “Le Palais Ducal” sold for $23.1 million and “La Seine à Vétheuil” sold for $11.5 million.

“Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil”, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s painting of his lover Françoise Gilot, fetched $29.9 million.

Other top sales at the auction included Spanish artist Joan Miro’s “L’oiseau encerclant de l’or éntincelant la pensée du poète” at $9.7 million, sculpture “Femme de Venise VI” by the Swiss Alberto Giacometti at $16.2 million, and “La Roue bleue, état définitif” by French cubist painter Fernand Léger at $10.6 million.

In its Contemporary Art Evening Auction on May 12, Sotheby’s will offer Roy Lichtenstein’s “The Ring (Engagement)”, valued at $60 million, a Rothko canvas, estimated to sell at $60 million, and a Jackson Pollock work, valued at $20 million.