Sotheby's to auction rare van Gogh and Cézanne masterpieces valued at $450 million

Sotheby's announced that a dozen Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, long hidden in a South American private collection, will go under the hammer in New York on Nov. 18. The lot features Vincent van Gogh’s "Chestnut Trees in Flower," estimated at $180 million, and Paul Cézanne’s portrait "Arlequin," valued at $120 million, both of which have not been seen publicly for about fifty years. The collection was built by the late Argentine collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier and her sugar-industry husband Carlos Pedro Blaquier, and is now being sold by their children.

Also included are cityscapes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, a horse-racing scene by Edgar Degas, and a boating picture by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, each carrying multi-million-dollar estimates. Sotheby's head of Impressionist and modern art, Helena Newman, likened the assemblage to a "mini-Musée D’Orsay" and expects global buyers from tech billionaires to major Middle Eastern institutions. Art market veteran Philip Hook highlighted the rarity of such a focused, high-quality collection emerging after years of secrecy.