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

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.

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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, the works 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 on Wednesday morning, 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.”

With contributions from CNN’s Leah Dolan.

今年秋天，苏富比将在纽约拍卖一幅罕见的文森特·梵高画作，这幅画作已有半个世纪未曾公开露面，预计将以惊人的 1.8 亿美元成交，并创下新的拍卖纪录。

通常来说，这足以成为一场十一月重头戏——但惊喜远不止于此。拍卖行还将推出一幅罕见的保罗·塞尚画作（同样近五十年未曾公开露面），估价约为1.2亿美元，并希望这幅画作能创下当晚的第二项纪录。

这两幅艺术杰作自上世纪70年代以来一直由同一家族收藏，并将与该家族收藏的其他十件艺术品一同拍卖，其中包括一幅莫奈和一幅雷诺阿的作品。苏富比将这些藏品统称为私人艺术收藏中的“黄金国”。如果一切按计划进行，拍卖行将在不到一小时内拍出价值4.5亿美元（甚至更多）的拍品。

苏富比欧洲区主席海伦娜·纽曼表示：“这是私人收藏中现存最伟大的印象派和后印象派艺术收藏之一。”她还称这批艺术品为“迷你版的奥赛博物馆”。

“它曾被奉为经典之作，拥有传奇般的地位，”她说。“但现在真相即将揭晓，人们将有机会一睹它的真容。”

苏富比前高级主管菲利普·胡克表示，这批藏品的神秘性贯穿了他的整个职业生涯。“里面有什么？质量如何？问题是，没人真正知道，”胡克周三上午在伦敦举行的新闻发布会上对记者们说道。他表示，原因之一是布拉基耶-阿里埃塔家族从未将这些画作借给博物馆。另一个原因是他们居住在阿根廷。“在上世纪90年代和本世纪初，这似乎离我们非常非常远，”他继续说道。

已故阿根廷商人卡洛斯·佩德罗·布拉基耶和艺术赞助人内莉·阿里埃塔·德·布拉基耶共同拥有的布拉基耶-阿里埃塔藏品，是艺术市场近几个季度以来赖以提振销售的又一超级藏家抛售案例。此前，传媒大亨S·I·纽豪斯、微软创始人保罗·G·艾伦、社交名媛兼艺术赞助人宝琳·卡皮达斯以及雅诗兰黛继承人伦纳德·A·劳德的藏品也相继售出——其中，伦纳德·A·劳德的藏品中就包括一幅以2.36亿美元成交的克里姆特画作，这幅画作成为拍卖史上成交价第二高的艺术品。

微软联合创始人艺术收藏品创纪录售出，成交额超过16亿美元

这些拍品由布拉基耶-阿里埃塔家族的子女在内莉于2020年去世、卡洛斯于2023年去世后进行拍卖。布拉基耶曾是一家糖厂的总裁，内莉则在多家大型博物馆的国际委员会任职，并负责管理他们的藏品。他们是阿根廷最有权势的家族之一。但在布拉基耶生命的最后十年里，他因涉嫌在1976年至1983年阿根廷残酷的军事独裁统治期间拘留活动人士而被调查，罪名是反人类罪。据BBC报道，他否认了这些指控。根据《民族报》的讣告，他生前从未受审。苏富比的一位发言人表示，他从未被定罪，并始终坚称自己无罪。

虽然即将举行的拍卖会在纽约进行，但这些作品已于周三上午在伦敦首次共同亮相。布拉基耶夫妇的大部分藏品都是在伦敦购得的，他们在夏季前往伦敦，直接从勒费弗尔画廊购买艺术品。勒费弗尔画廊曾是印象派和现代艺术领域的重要机构，直到21世纪初关闭。

如果这两件顶级拍品都创下新纪录，这将是佳士得第二次在同一晚，同一系列藏品中，两位艺术家的个人纪录都被打破。佳士得在2022年保罗·艾伦作品拍卖会上创造了历史，促成了梵高的风景画《绿荫与柏树》（Verger avec cyprès）以1.17亿美元成交，以及塞尚的山景画《圣维克多山》（La Montagne Sainte-Victoire）以1.377亿美元成交，这两幅画作均创作于1888年。

这幅梵高画作名为《玫瑰与白花中的猫》（Chataignier en fleurs roses et blanches），并未在伦敦展出，而是正在前往香港的途中，将于今年晚些时候在香港的拍卖会前进行展出。这幅画创作于梵高生命中的最后两个月，地点在瓦兹河畔欧维尔村。当时，梵高刚刚从圣雷米精神病院出院，他自愿在那里接受了一年的治疗。苏富比指出，梵高在创作这幅画时展现出了“活力”和“乐观”。

纽曼说：“这是一种令人惊叹、充满活力的色彩运用。”他还指出，这位艺术家晚年的作品如今只剩下“寥寥几件”。其中几件收藏于奥赛博物馆，包括他为自己的医生保罗·加歇医生所作的肖像。

周三上午在伦敦苏富比画廊展出的塞尚作品《丑角》（Arlequin）色彩鲜艳夺目，引人注目。这幅作品出自四幅同名画作，也是其中唯一一幅未被博物馆收藏的作品。新闻稿指出，这幅画作曾辗转于法国著名艺术品经销商安布鲁瓦兹·沃拉尔、保罗·杜兰-鲁埃尔和保罗·罗森伯格之手，并在纽约现代艺术博物馆、伦敦泰特美术馆和芝加哥艺术学院举办的塞尚重要展览中展出，最终于1975年售予布拉基耶家族。

如今，他们的藏品被誉为印象派和后印象派艺术的最后几批珍品之一——这一时期的艺术在经济动荡时期已成为人们的避风港。随着这些藏品的逐渐减少，高端艺术市场的健康状况将如何，仍有待观察。纽曼承认，这是一个代际更迭的现象，因为那些在20世纪60年代至80年代形成的藏品，如今随着藏家年龄增长或去世而进入市场。

纽曼表示，对于世界上极少数能够负担得起博物馆级别藏品的收藏家来说，这是一个难得的机会。“对于这些收藏家，无论是资深藏家还是新晋藏家来说，这都是一个竞争的时刻，我们所有人都会非常关注这一过程。”

本文部分内容由 CNN 的 Leah Dolan 提供。