A $450M art collection is poised to break Van Gogh and Cézanne’s auction records

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — In New York this fall, Sotheby’s will put up for auction a rare Vincent van Gogh painting, not seen for half a century, which it expects will sell for a staggering $180 million and set a new auction record.

That would normally be enough buzz for a marquee November evening sale — but there’s more. The auction house will also follow it up with a rare Paul Cézanne painting (also not seen for the last five decades), that it has estimated “in the region” of $120 million and hope will set a second record for the night.

The two masterworks have both been held by the same family since the 1970s — and will sell alongside ten of their other collected artworks including a Monet and a Renoir, that together, Sotheby’s is promoting as the “El Dorado” of private art collections. If all goes as planned, the auction house will clean up $450 million (or more) in less than an hour.

“It’s one of the greatest remaining collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in private hands,” said Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, who also referred to the group of artworks as “a mini Musée d’Orsay.”

“It had this legendary, mythical status as one of the greats,” she said. “But now there is the reveal, and people will get the chance to see what it comprises.”

Philip Hook, a former senior director at Sotheby’s said the mystery of the collection was a “constant” throughout his career. “What was in it? How good was it? The thing was, no one really knew,” Hook told journalists at a press view in London on Wednesday morning. One reason was because the Blaquier-Arrieta family never lent the pictures to museums, he said. The other was because they were based in Argentina. “This seemed a very, very long way away” in the ‘90s and noughties, he continued.

The Blaquier-Arrieta collection, owned by the late Argentinian businessman Carlos Pedro Blaquier and the art patron Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, is the latest mega-collector sell-off that the art market has relied on for the past few seasons to buoy its sales. It follows the collections of media magnate SI Newhouse, Microsoft founder Paul G Allen, socialite and art patron Pauline Karpidas, and Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder — the last of which included the $236 million Klimt that became the second-most expensive work of art to ever sell at auction.

The lots are being sold by the children of the Blaquier-Arrieta family after Nelly’s death in 2020 and Carlos’ in 2023. Blaquier was president of a sugar mill, and Nelly served on international committees for major museums, and guided their collection. They were one of the most powerful families in Argentina. But for the last decade of Blaquier’s life, he was investigated for crimes against humanity, for allegedly detaining activists during the Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship from 1976-83, which the BBC reported that he denied. He never stood trial before his death, according to his obituary in La Nacion. A spokesperson for Sothebys said that he was never convicted and always maintained his innocence.

While the upcoming sale will take place in New York, a handful of the 12 works –– including “En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque)” (1877) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro’s “La Place du Théâtre-Français et l’avenue de l’Opéra, soleil d’après-midi en hiver” (1898) –– were unveiled together for the first time in London on Wednesday morning. That’s where the Blaquiers procured much of their collection, traveling during the summer months to purchase directly from Lefevre Gallery, a major player in Impressionist and Modern art until its closure at the turn of the 21st century.

If both top lots set new records, it will be the second time both artist’s records have been broken in the same night, as part of the same collection. Christie’s historic 2022 sale of Paul Allen’s works led to the $117 million sale of Van Gogh’s landscape “Verger avec cyprès” and $137.7 million sale of Cézanne’s mountain scene “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire,” both painted in 1888.

This Van Gogh painting, titled “Chataignier en fleurs roses et blanches,” which was not on show in London but instead on its way to Hong Kong where it will be displayed ahead of the auction later this year, was made in the last two months of the artist’s life in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh had only just been released from the psychiatric facility in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he’d voluntarily admitted himself for a year, and Sotheby’s notes the “vigor” and “optimism” of the period.

“It’s an amazing, exuberant palette,” Newman said, noting that there’s only a “handful” of works still out there from the end of the artist’s life. Several hang in the Musée d’Orsay, including one of his portraits of the physician who treated him, Doctor Paul Gachet.

The neighboring Cézanne work, “Arlequin,” a vibrant color-clashing work that took centerstage in Sotheby’s London gallery, is from a set of four Harlequin paintings, and is the only one not held by a museum, the press release noted. It passed through the hands of important French art dealers Ambroise Vollard, Paul Durand-Ruel and Paul Rosenberg, and exhibited in seminal Cézanne exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London and the Art Institute of Chicago before it was eventually sold to the Blaquier family in 1975.

Now, their collection is being marketed as one of the last great tranches of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art — a period of art that has become a safety net during economic turbulence. How the health of the art market at its highest end will fare as these collections dwindle remains to be seen. Newman acknowledged that it is a generational shift as collections that formed from the 1960s-80s come to market now as their owners age and pass.

For the — very few — collectors in the world who can afford their own museum-worthy collection, Newman says this is a rare opportunity. “It’s a moment for those collectors, both established and new, to be competing, and that will be very interesting for us all to see.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

With contributions from CNN’s Leah Dolan.