Van Gogh and Cézanne Works Unseen for 50 Years Lead Sotheby’s November Sales in New York

A single-estate collection of 12 long-hidden Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works—predicted to net $450 million in total—will lead Sotheby’s November auctions.

The works, to be sold in New York City on 18 November, come from the collection of Nelly Blaquier de Arrieta and Carlos Pedro Blaquier, of the Argentinian Ledesma agro-industrial fortune. The paintings, revealed in an announcement this morning, include works by Van Gogh and Cézanne, which are estimated to bring in $180 million (a potential auction record for Van Gogh) and $120 million respectively.

Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and worldwide head of Impressionist and Modern Art told Ocula that the Blaquier-Arrieta collection is of “the kind of quality and calibre that you see nowadays mostly only in museums”. In a statement, Sotheby’s senior adviser Simon Shaw called it “a miniature Musée d’Orsay”.

In 1995, in a New York Times article titled ‘For Argentine Collectors, Art Is Long Distance’, Nelly Blaquier de Arrieta’s collection was described as “Argentina’s largest private art collection”. Much of the collection, including most of the works selling with Sotheby’s, was assembled in London during the 1970s.

The collection is led by Van Gogh’s Chataignier en fleurs roses et blanches (1890), a painting of a peaceful street scene set around a monumental chestnut tree, executed in the last months of the artist’s life. Though its official estimate is listed in the region of $180 million, Newman told Ocula that the work “could be making $200 million”.

In either case, the painting would break the artist’s auction record, currently held by Verger avec cyprès (1888), which sold in 2022 at Christie’s in New York City for $117 million. (Notably, Kenny Schachter reported earlier this year that Van Gogh’s Le Zouave (1888), also from the Blaquier-Arrieta collection, sold for around $190 million through a private auction at Christie’s.)

The collection to be offered for sale in November also includes works by Camille Pissaro, Pierre-August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Alfred Sisley, André Derain, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice de Vlaminck.

In recent years, a virtuous-cycle narrative has slowly buoyed the auction market: significant collections, such as those of S.I. Newhouse, Leonard Lauder and Paul Allen, have achieved big results, moving more major collectors and their heirs to bring work to auction, leading to more big results. “It’s only by having the opportunity to offer great masterpieces [...] that you can see in public record, through the public auction process, the depth and strength of the market,” said Newman.

She also hinted that, as well as established collectors, the slew of big-name works coming up at auction might pique the interest of new collectors from the worlds of tech and finance. “They like the validation of the auction process,” she told Ocula. “It’s a very public forum in which to see that the wider market believes in the value of these works.”

With autumn sales in London and New York City coming up, eyes are on Sotheby’s and Christie’s to see whether they can continue to lubricate their virtuous cycle. The mood at the auction houses, which inevitably infects other areas of the market, is one of confidence. Sales like that of the Blaquier-Arrieta collection “really set the tone for the wider market”, Newman told Ocula. “People scrutinise these.”