Long-Hidden Van Gogh and Cézanne Paintings Head to Auction

One of the most closely guarded private art collections of the past half century is about to change hands. Sotheby’s said on Wednesday that it will auction the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, a group of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings assembled by the late Argentine collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her husband, the sugar industrialist Carlos Pedro Blaquier, at a sale in New York in November.

Sotheby’s expects the collection as a whole to bring in about $450 million, close to half a billion dollars. The auction house is presenting the sale as a rare event for the Impressionist market.

The best-known work is Vincent van Gogh’s “Châtaigniers en fleurs,” or “Chestnut Trees in Flower,” painted in the last months of the artist’s life in 1890. The sale also includes a Cézanne portrait of the artist’s son dressed as Harlequin, along with works by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir among others. Sotheby’s put several of the paintings on view in London on Wednesday, with the Cézanne at the center; the Van Gogh was not among them and was on its way to Hong Kong to be shown there before the sale, according to CNN.

Much of the excitement comes from how little anyone has seen of these pictures. The Blaquiers bought much of the collection in London, and the family has held the top works since the 1970s without lending them to museums, so the works have been largely out of public view for about 50 years. Art specialists quoted in coverage of the announcement described the collection as close to legendary, precisely because so few people knew exactly what it contained.

Sotheby’s expects the sale to draw interest from collectors and institutions in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. A collection that has been off the market since the 1970s offers something auction houses prize: famous names attached to pictures that buyers have never had a chance to bid on before.

There is a reasonable case that sales like this are good for the public. Works that have hung in a private home for decades are being photographed, studied and exhibited again, at least for a few weeks, and some may eventually land in museums. The counterpoint is just as real: at prices in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, few public institutions can compete, and a painting that surfaces for one autumn preview can easily disappear into another private collection for another 50 years.

For now, a handful of the paintings have been shown publicly ahead of the November sale. Whoever buys the Van Gogh, the art world will be watching to see whether the new owner chooses to keep it on the wall at home or lend it to a museum where the rest of us can finally see it.