Collection of ‘legendary’ artworks led by van Gogh set to fetch £338m at auction

Twelve largely unseen paintings, including works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet are expected to fetch around 450 million US dollars (£338 million) at auction.

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Sotheby’s will offer the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, a group of impressionist and modern paintings, in New York on November 18.

Two paintings in particular lead the collection: Chataigniers En Fleurs by van Gogh, estimated in the region of 180 million US dollars (£135 million), and Arlequin by Cezanne, estimated in the region of 120 million US dollars (£90 million).

Neither has been seen in public for more than 50 years.

Both are among the most important works by their respective artists to come to market, and both are poised to establish new auction records.

Chataigniers En Fleurs was painted in May 1890, days after the artist’s arrival in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he was to spend the last two months of his life.

Newly released from the psychiatric asylum of Saint Remy, and within an hour of his brother Theo in Paris , van Gogh is said to have experienced a powerful wave of optimism and energy that spilled out onto his canvases, making this period “the most urgent and expressive period of his career”.

Almost every painting from this period now hangs in one of the world’s great museums.

Similarly, Cezanne’s Arlequin is one of only two of the artist’s sequence of 15 late figure paintings that is not held in a museum.

Painted between 1888 and 1890, Cezanne’s four seminal Harlequin paintings are the first for which his son Paul posed.

Other works in the collection include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s En Canot (Jeune Fille A La Barque), estimated at 25 to 35 million US dollars (£18.8 to £26.3 million), Camille Pissarro’s Parisian streetscape La Place Du Theatre-Francais Et L’Avenue De L’Opera, Soleil D’Apres-Midi En Hiver, estimated at 30 to 40 million US dollars (£22.61 to £30.14 million), and Edgar Degas’ pastel Avant La Course, estimated at 20 to 30 million US dollars (£15.12 million to £22.68 million).

The group is completed by two early impressionist landscapes – Monet’s Le Jardin Des Tuileries and Alfred Sisley’s La Seine A Port-Marly – together with a rare Paul Gauguin still life painted in his final years in Tahiti; a portrait by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; a further work by Pissarro; and two Fauve paintings by Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.

The paintings were unveiled in London on Wednesday from the collection of Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, Argentinian art collectors.

Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, told the Press Association: “It’s one of the most important groups of works of impressionist and post-impressionist art from a private collection that we’ve ever offered.

“We’ve called the collection legendary because indeed it is legendary.

“There are many highlights. The two masterpieces that lead the collection are the Cezanne and the van Gogh.”

Simon Shaw, senior adviser, impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s, said: “There was a time when you could walk into a top gallery in London or New York and, over a few years, build something of real museum quality. You simply can’t do that now, at any price.

“What strikes me most is that the Blaquier-Arrieta collection doesn’t feel like a private collection at all.

“It feels like a small museum – a miniature Musee d’Orsay, now opening its doors for the very first time.”